Marvelling, the royal way to rediscover the spirit of childhood
The young child has this incredible ability to marvel at everything. But what happens when he grows up? His capacity for wonder, which assumes slowness and observation, seems to have disappeared, to give way to the frenzy: frenzy of rhythms of life, frenzy of consumption, digital frenzy. How can one preserve, in an increasingly hectic environment, one's own capacity to marvel?
"This simplicity of the soul, we dedicate our lives to acquiring it, or to finding it if we have known it, for it is a gift of childhood that most often does not survive childhood... Once you're out of childhood, it takes a very long time to get back in," says Georges Bernanos to the Priory of the Carmelite Dialogue, considered his spiritual testament. For the Catholic writer, holiness consists in reappropriating, at the end of a long inner journey, this disposition of the soul with which we were born and which we lost growing up, characterized by innocence, simplicity, joy, abandonment, and wonder. This is what he calls "the spirit of childhood." A lifelong challenge, which he expresses beautifully in The Great Cemeteries Under the Moon: "Whatever my life is! I just want her to stay true to the child I was to the end." One of the keys would therefore lie in our ability to marvel, in the manner of small children. Here are a few ways to get there.
1
RELEARN TO RELEARN THE WORLD COMME A CADEAU
"The child doesn't need fairy tales. Life is, on its own, interesting enough. What amuses the seven-year-old is knowing that Tommy opened the door on a dragon. But for the three-year-old, it's fun enough to know that the door has opened," Chesterton wrote. He emphasized the innate ability of the little child to marvel at a reality considered banal by the adult. To return to the spirit of childhood is to be able to see in all things a gift and realize that what is might as well have been not.
"Dad, why is the rain coming down and not going up?" The kind of question that parents are familiar with because they often find themselves unarmed in the face of these remarks, which they consider more or less ludicrous or even downright absurd. This is the example given by Catherine L'Ecuyer, a Quebec doctor of education sciences and psychology, in her book Cultivating Wonder (Eyrolles). "When our two-, three- or four-year-old bombards us with seemingly illogical questions, it's not that he wants an explanation. Nor is it out of a desire to change the order of things. It's just his way of admiring a reality that is, and might as well not have been," she says. "Young children know how to marvel because they don't take the world for granted; they receive it more as a gift. Challenging a known, given, normal reality is a good way to fully welcome it for what it really is: a gift.
2
EXPLORING NEW HORIZONS
Aristotle said, "All humans, by nature, have the desire to know." 1500 years later, St. Thomas Aquinas points out that "amazement is a certain desire to know." To marvel, then, is to desire to know. Wonder generates the motivation to learn, to know, to discover. In the very small, it is the astonishment at the existence of a toy out of its reach that will push him to reach it. In the young child, it is the fascination aroused by the slow ascent of a snail on a wall that will encourage him to observe it. It is still the wonder at the word that motivates him to utter new words.
"This simplicity of the soul, we dedicate our lives to acquiring it, or to finding it if we have known it, for it is a gift of childhood that most often does not survive childhood... Once you're out of childhood, it takes a very long time to get back in," says Georges Bernanos to the Priory of the Carmelite Dialogue, considered his spiritual testament. For the Catholic writer, holiness consists in reappropriating, at the end of a long inner journey, this disposition of the soul with which we were born and which we lost growing up, characterized by innocence, simplicity, joy, abandonment, and wonder. This is what he calls "the spirit of childhood." A lifelong challenge, which he expresses beautifully in The Great Cemeteries Under the Moon: "Whatever my life is! I just want her to stay true to the child I was to the end." One of the keys would therefore lie in our ability to marvel, in the manner of small children. Here are a few ways to get there.
1
RELEARN TO RELEARN THE WORLD COMME A CADEAU
"The child doesn't need fairy tales. Life is, on its own, interesting enough. What amuses the seven-year-old is knowing that Tommy opened the door on a dragon. But for the three-year-old, it's fun enough to know that the door has opened," Chesterton wrote. He emphasized the innate ability of the little child to marvel at a reality considered banal by the adult. To return to the spirit of childhood is to be able to see in all things a gift and realize that what is might as well have been not.
"Dad, why is the rain coming down and not going up?" The kind of question that parents are familiar with because they often find themselves unarmed in the face of these remarks, which they consider more or less ludicrous or even downright absurd. This is the example given by Catherine L'Ecuyer, a Quebec doctor of education sciences and psychology, in her book Cultivating Wonder (Eyrolles). "When our two-, three- or four-year-old bombards us with seemingly illogical questions, it's not that he wants an explanation. Nor is it out of a desire to change the order of things. It's just his way of admiring a reality that is, and might as well not have been," she says. "Young children know how to marvel because they don't take the world for granted; they receive it more as a gift. Challenging a known, given, normal reality is a good way to fully welcome it for what it really is: a gift.
2
EXPLORING NEW HORIZONS
Aristotle said, "All humans, by nature, have the desire to know." 1500 years later, St. Thomas Aquinas points out that "amazement is a certain desire to know." To marvel, then, is to desire to know. Wonder generates the motivation to learn, to know, to discover. In the very small, it is the astonishment at the existence of a toy out of its reach that will push him to reach it. In the young child, it is the fascination aroused by the slow ascent of a snail on a wall that will encourage him to observe it. It is still the wonder at the word that motivates him to utter new words.
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