Wonder

This is a moderately close up picture of a rock in the yard down the street. It caught my eye a while ago because of the unusual nature of the holes in the rock.

It doesn’t quite look volcanic. Maybe it’s coral? But it doesn’t look like any that I’ve seen before. Perhaps just a strange type of erosion based on the different materials that originally made up the rock? But the holes don’t look like the kind of shapes that usually result from mixing.

So it’s a mystery, at least to me. What should we make of such things?

In general, I think mysteries are opportunities. They are opportunities to ask questions, to wonder, like the previous paragraph, about possibilities: What could it be? Where could it have come from? Where is it going? What could it mean?

They are also opportunities to learn, if we choose, to attempt to answer the questions. The easiest thing is often to shrug and go on, but living a life of wonder seems much more interesting to me. A life of seeking to understand more, and to use this understanding to make things better.

Of course, we have to prioritize. Not every single thing we wonder about needs to be investigated, but with wise choices, wonder will lead to the kind of seeking that leads to light.

I may choose not to investigate the source of this particular rock, but I hope to keep the spirit of wonder alive, and to never stop learning.