Look at everything with a Sense of Wonder

I walk into the Northwest Regional Library, and I see thousands of books on hundreds of topics sitting on countless shelves. I marvel at the vast ocean of knowledge out there and feel the depth of my ignorance. That is just one tiny county library.

I think about the Library of Congress in Washington DC which has 162 million items, of which 16 million are books.

The British Library has 153 million items.

The New York Public Library has 53 million items.

Of all the knowledge and wisdom contained in those millions of items, I know very little.

There are people who go through life with a thick head and closed mind, pretending that they know everything. They claim to possess the complete and correct information on a given topic, and what they believe is the only truth and those who believe differently are wrong. They also think that they know the way to heaven and those who don’t follow their way are destined for hell. And of course, God only speaks through one book and all other books are wrong.

We need a truck load of humility and ocean-like openness to the mystery of life.

We must admit that we cannot define Almighty God using our limited vocabulary. We should not insist that God speaks only to special religious groups using just one specific holy book. Be curious. Be generous- minded. Be humble. And be open to the mystery of life.

Einstein believed that the most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mysterious. “He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand in rapt awe, is as good as dead, a snuffed-out candle.”

I love Einstein — his modesty, humility, curiosity, sense of mystery and wonder. Upon his death, the New York Times editorial wrote:

Man stands on this diminutive earth, gazes at the myriad stars and upon billowing oceans and tossing trees — and wonders. What does it all mean? How did it come about? The most thoughtful wonder who appeared among us in three centuries has passed on in the person of Albert Einstein.

According to his biographer Walter Isaacson, the explanation Einstein gave for his mental achievement is his curiosity.

“I have no special talents; I am only passionately curious.”

His curiosity had nothing to do with arrogantly questioning what he did not understand, but it came from a childlike sense of marvel that prompted him to question the familiar — situations and concepts that the ordinary adult never bothers his head about.

It appears that Einstein was already practicing mindfulness before it became popular, decades after his death. Is it possible that he was drawing inspiration from another scientist and philosopher, Isaac Newton, who lived three centuries before him?

Newton wrote:

I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself, I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself now and then, finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

Live your life as if it is your first day at the cosmic kindergarten called planet Earth.