Wonder Is a Practice: Learning to See What Is Already Here

Yesterday morning, I sat outside in my egg chair with a warm mug of mushroom coffee cupped between my hands. I was still in my pajamas, enjoying the cool morning air against my skin—the kind of cool that feels especially delicious when you know the heat of the day is coming. The sun was up, but the day hadn't fully begun yet. There were things I needed to do, of course. There are always things to do. But for a little while, I was simply sitting there, letting myself belong to the morning.

And then I heard the familiar buzz of a hummingbird.

I hear hummingbirds almost every morning. We have a feeder outside, and they visit it regularly enough that I recognize the sound of their wings before I even see them. Sometimes they fly so close that I can feel the tiny disturbance of air against my skin. They have become part of the familiar landscape of my mornings.

But yesterday morning, I saw one.

Two hummingbirds were darting around the feeder, chasing one another in the way hummingbirds do. I watched one hover nearby, his tiny body somehow suspended in the air while his wings moved faster than my eyes could follow. The morning light caught the iridescent green of his feathers, shifting their color as he moved. I could hear that familiar buzzing, could see the almost frantic movement of his wings, and then, suddenly, everything changed.

He landed.

For a few seconds, those impossibly fast wings became still.

And so did I.

I sat there with the warmth of the mug against my palms and the cool air against my skin, watching this tiny creature perched only a few feet away from me. I could hear him. I could see the details of his feathers. I watched the small movements of his body. For those few seconds, that hummingbird had my entire attention.

And then I noticed something else.

I noticed myself noticing.

I became aware of just how completely present I was. My life, in that moment, was quiet enough that I could sit in my pajamas holding a warm cup between my hands and give my full attention to a hummingbird. I wasn't thinking about what I needed to accomplish that day. I wasn't replaying a conversation from yesterday or mentally arranging the hours ahead of me. There was nowhere else I needed to be, at least for those few seconds.

There was warm coffee. Cool air. Buzzing wings. Iridescent green. Breath. Morning.

And somehow, becoming aware of my own presence opened the moment even wider. I felt connected to everything around me—to the morning, to my body sitting in that chair, to the air touching my skin, to this tiny creature living his tiny hummingbird life just a few feet away from mine. For the briefest moment, it almost felt as though I knew what he was thinking and feeling. Of course, I didn't. But the usual boundary between me over here and life happening out there seemed to soften. I wasn't observing the morning anymore. I was part of it.

And what I felt was wonder.

Maybe even bliss.

Not because anything extraordinary had happened. That same hummingbird may have visited that same feeder hundreds of mornings before.

The difference was that, for a moment, I was completely there to see him.

How the Familiar Becomes Invisible

We tend to think wonder belongs to extraordinary experiences. We stand at the edge of the ocean and feel it. We look into a sky crowded with stars and suddenly remember how small we are. We travel somewhere we've never been, watch the sun disappear behind a mountain, hold a newborn baby, or encounter something so beautiful that the mind briefly runs out of language for it. These experiences almost demand our attention because they interrupt the familiar. We don't already know what we're looking at, and so we look more closely.

But most of our lives aren't lived at the edge of the Grand Canyon. Most of our lives are remarkably ordinary. We wake up in the same room. We reach for the same coffee cup. We look into the same faces. We drive familiar roads and pass familiar trees. We inhabit the same body we inhabited yesterday. We hear the hummingbird at the feeder again.

Our minds are designed to become familiar with things. Imagine how exhausting it would be if every time we walked into our kitchen, we had to rediscover what a refrigerator was. Familiarity helps us move through the world. We learn, we categorize, we remember. I know what this is. And once the mind decides it knows, it no longer needs to give that thing quite so much attention.

The tree becomes tree. The morning becomes morning. The person beside us becomes partner or friend or child. The hummingbird becomes the hummingbird that comes to the feeder. Even our own body can become something we move around in without really inhabiting.

We recognize things instead of encountering them.

And I find myself wondering how much of our lives becomes invisible this way.

Not because we don't care. Not because we aren't grateful. Not because the ordinary things around us have somehow become less beautiful. Perhaps they simply become so familiar that we stop really seeing them.

Yesterday's hummingbird wasn't more magnificent than the hummingbird I saw the day before. His feathers weren't greener. His wings weren't moving any faster. The morning hadn't arranged some spectacular display just for me.

I was more available to his beauty.

And maybe availability is part of what makes wonder possible. Attention alone isn't quite enough. There is an openness inside wonder—a willingness to let what we are experiencing affect us. For a moment, we stop standing apart from life long enough to let ourselves be touched by it.

That distinction feels important to me.

Because it means wonder may not simply be a feeling that occasionally happens to us when life becomes beautiful enough. Wonder might also be something we can practice.

The Practice of Wonder

I have begun to wonder if wonder itself is, at least in part, a way of paying attention. It is what becomes possible when we slow down enough to encounter something rather than simply recognize it. We stop moving quite so quickly past what we think we already know and allow ourselves to become curious again.

There is a phrase I have come to love for exactly this reason: I wonder.

There is so much spaciousness in those two words.

Our minds like certainty. We name, categorize and predict because it helps us make sense of our experience. But certainty can also quietly close a door. I know what this is. I know how this person will respond. I know what today is going to be like. I know what my body can do. I know what I like. I know what I don't like. I know who I am.

When we are certain we already know, there isn't much reason to keep looking.

I wonder cracks that certainty open just enough for something new to enter.

I wonder what I haven't noticed. I wonder what has changed. I wonder what this person I have loved for years is experiencing today. I wonder what my body is trying to tell me this morning. I wonder what might happen if I stayed with this feeling instead of immediately trying to make it go away. I wonder what this familiar place would look like if I walked through it slowly. I wonder what I don't understand yet.

We don't necessarily need answers to these questions. In fact, I think that's part of the beauty of wonder. It doesn't demand an answer. It simply asks us to lean a little closer.

And when we lean closer, we begin to notice texture again: the warmth of a ceramic mug against our hands, the way someone's whole face changes when they laugh, the smell of rain before we feel the first drop, the sensation of water running across our skin, the way late-summer light falls differently than it did a month ago, the subtle expansion of the ribs when we breathe.

These things were there all along.

We simply became available enough to experience them.

This is one of the reasons I think wonder and presence are so deeply connected. Presence is not merely the ability to stop thinking about the past or future. Presence is a willingness to actually inhabit our experience—to feel, hear, see and sense the life that is happening while it is happening.

And wonder can be one of the gifts of that attention.

Turning Wonder Inward

Perhaps what interests me even more is what happens when we bring this same quality of attention toward ourselves.

We become familiar with ourselves, too. We carry around stories about who we are and how we behave. We know our strengths, our insecurities, our patterns, our preferences. Sometimes we can name an experience so quickly that the naming becomes the end of our curiosity: I'm anxious. I'm overwhelmed. I'm angry. I'm bad at this. I'm too sensitive. This is just how I am.

But a name is not the whole experience.

Maybe anxiety isn't simply anxiety when we become curious about it. Maybe it is a tightness beneath the breastbone, a fluttering in the belly, a jaw that has been clenched without our realizing it, a breath that hasn't quite made its way to the bottom of our lungs. Perhaps what we first called irritation has exhaustion underneath it. Perhaps sadness contains longing. Perhaps the urge to push through is accompanied by a body quietly asking us to rest.

We won't always know. We don't need to.

There is a gentleness in I wonder that I love. Wonder doesn't arrive with an agenda. It doesn't say, We need to fix this.

It says, Tell me more.

And perhaps that is one of the ways wonder becomes a form of compassion. We become willing to meet ourselves as something still worth discovering rather than as a problem we have already figured out. We make a little more room for what is actually here before deciding what it means or what we should do about it.

Even after all these years of living inside this body, perhaps there are things about myself I haven't noticed yet. Even after all these years of loving the people I love, perhaps there are things about them I haven't seen yet. Even after hundreds of mornings sitting outside my home, perhaps there is still something here capable of taking my breath away.

The Life Already Here

There are times when we genuinely need change. We need adventure and newness. We need to travel somewhere we've never been, learn something we don't know, meet new people, leave old patterns behind, or step across a threshold into a different chapter of our lives. I love those kinds of experiences.

But I don't want to become so dependent upon novelty that I miss the life I already have.

Because yesterday morning there was a hummingbird outside my house.

There was cool air brushing against my skin. There was warmth held between my palms. There was morning light catching green feathers. There was a tiny heart beating inside a body that can somehow hover in midair. There was my own heart beating inside a body sitting perfectly still in an egg chair, watching.

There was an entire world happening around me.

And for a few precious moments, I was actually there for it.

Maybe that is the practice of wonder. Not forcing ourselves to feel grateful. Not insisting that every moment is beautiful. Not using awe to paint over the parts of life that are painful, monotonous, complicated or exhausting. Wonder doesn't require us to pretend.

It simply asks us to remain curious enough to keep looking. To interrupt I know every once in a while with I wonder. To let something familiar become mysterious again.

So sometime today, perhaps choose something ordinary. Something you believe you already know. Your hands. Your morning coffee. The tree outside your window. The face of someone you love. The sensation of water against your skin. Your own breath.

Stay with it for just a little longer than you normally would. Feel it. Hear it. Look closely.

You don't have to make the moment meaningful. You don't need to manufacture gratitude or awe.

Simply become available to it.

And perhaps ask:

What is here that I haven't noticed before?

Then wait.

Maybe nothing happens.

Or maybe, for one brief moment, you'll notice yourself noticing.

And there, tucked quietly inside an ordinary moment of an ordinary day, you may discover wonder waiting for you.

Practice Wonder With Me

If you'd like to explore this practice beyond the page, I've created a guided Meditation on Wonder. It's an invitation to slow down, soften what you think you already know, and become curious about your breath, your body, yourself, and the ordinary life unfolding around you.

You don't need to go searching for something extraordinary.

Perhaps you simply need to become available to what is already here.

Click HERE to find this meditation in my online store.