[originally published as newsletter on 11/24/2025]
I’ve come to know that we can experience beauty and wonder in everyday life by tapping childhood curiosity, and gently holding those questions still unanswered.
As a kid, I did not do typical activities like sports and girl scouts. Mostly because my single mom was too tired and we didn’t have much money. So instead I made stuff, wrote stuff, chased nature, and tried out religions and archetypes for fun. We talked Carl Jung over scrambled eggs most mornings.
At 8 years old I decided to be Catholic and went about inviting godparents and getting baptized in a white dress my mom made. A year later, I hosted my own party for my first communion, making some sandwiches for company while feeling gleefully full of wafers and incense-whispered holiness.
At eleven, I was introduced to a Hindu yoga tradition by a weekend meditation intensive; and by 17 was devouring western and eastern philosophy books while fooling around with boys and driving around the state in an old Dodge listening to Ram Dass lectures on auto-reverse death loop. During all of this, I took some vows in my heart.
Not sure I’ve been faithful to any of these vows, but I’ve faithful to seeking truth and peace for sure. And this makes my life rich and wondrous, even if not always easy.
Seeking is free. Still is. And what you seek, you tend to experience, even if cloaked in symbols, or felt in waves of emotion. And this is okay, its part of our journey as humans. Better than being like machines, no doubt – gbborrrrrinnng!
Wondering is like an engine of your experience. It tunes your perception to notice certain things.
For instance, if you are someone once obsessed over horses, you may be attuned to every carousel and horse motif you see. While others might miss in a horseshoe pattern on a textile, you won’t. That’s because your brain got engaged with horsey-ness long ago. You wondered, you engaged, you learned. Maybe you even loved.
Hey, horseshoes are lucky are they not? 🧲
As a kid I was obsessed over the Greek Myths, The Arabian Nights, and a Rand McNally Atlas of the Universe. Also, finding critters, building forts, studying maps, wondering why letters and numbers do what they do, and making art daily to sort out all the complicated feelings and communications I couldn’t weave into common sense.
My curiosity was pure and my experience of life was vivid and free. And for a time when you were little, so it was for you.
Do you remember what those wondrous things were like, for you? What did you zone out in as a kid? Music, fairy tales, Lincoln Logs, potholders, mud, silly string, vacuum cleaners? What was amazing to you then? What about those things was amazing to you?
Wonder is beautiful to me, first felt by staring at the stars and watching two celestial bodies move away from one another and asking “what and why was that?!” I learned some astronomical likelihoods over the years, but nothing definitive. And I will never know precisely the answer because the moment is over. Therefore that mystery will remain for my entire life.
I’m so grateful for that.
If you’d like a touch of wonder today, you just need to let some child-time curiosities surface a little, so you can ask about them again, like you are calling on an old friend, seeing how they’re doing.
And, to keep it real, it‘s wise to do something about the answers you receive, like read a book about the subject, draw a picture, or talk with someone about what you’ve been seeking and seeing. This helps.
You can also share your story. The story of your heart. Of your soul. Of your questions, of your answers… There’s probably something in there helpful to someone else.
The unique questions you’ve not yet answered can serve like an engine under your perception, here to bring you peace and something positive to your community too. Let them be. It’s okay not to know stuff.
I’ve found some unanswered musings have been running a whole bunch of operations of how – and why – I do what I do, even if I can’t explain this for years at a time; because, you know, people say you’ve got to pay bills and do grown up sh!t like get insurance.
These days I hear melodies in the traffic, see characters in rocks and roots, and feel gravity like she’s a friend. Oh yeah, and write to you.
I occasionally have empathic inklings why other folks do what they do too, and what experiences mean. And I can see sometimes when it is time to revisit those old inquiries because maybe the answers you settled on don’t work the same as they did before.
Questions can be like internal engines that give us wonder, healing, and hope. And they show us, Us. The fun of revelation comes when you move slow enough to recognize the answers in quirky ways in real time.
I hope you can enjoy a gentle uncovering of your own special questions. Or maybe even write some new ones to gives you some hope, joy, and a sense of self you can fall in love with.
Whether we’ve wondered why people do what they do, how big the ocean feels compared to a bathtub, how can all this matter come out of the earth and return gently to it, or how the letter Y can sponsor an episode of Sesame Street, we all can live with a bit of wonder a little longer, and be thankful for the chance to see the revealations in our own lives.
With thankfulness for you,
Elizabeth
