How This Simple Daily Practice May Just Help Mend Our Fractured Society

I have a question for you:

What did you wonder about today? Was it something small like why traffic lights are red, yellow, and green and not some other combination of colors?

Or maybe it was something bigger like why humans find comfort in love.

Maybe you didn’t wonder about anything. And that’s perfectly ok.

But one of the most beautiful aspects of our humanity is our ability and desire to wonder about the world around us. And, if you’ll lend your eyes and ears for just a few minutes, I’ll make the case that wondering might just be the simple step we need to repair our set-in-stone society around us.

So what is wondering, anyways? Well, here’s my attempt at defining it:

Wondering is our beautiful ability to question the world around us without negatively implied bias. Questioning, as it stands, has a negative connotation. If you question something, one immediately sets the stage for hopeful disproving, rather than simply exploring and understanding.

On any given day, I find that my most fulfilling moments are those in which I wonder about my surroundings. Not in any sort of antipathetic way, but simply out of curiosity.

I’ve spoken before at length about my fondness for curiosity, but what I want to propose here is a simple practice each and every one of you can adopt starting today.

Here it is: actively wonder about at least one part of your world daily.

Like I said in the beginning, it doesn’t have to be something big—don’t tire yourself out. The point of this practice is to exercise your mind to break down the assumptions you’ve grown up with. In large part, this is meant to rebuild your childhood creativity that much of adulthood has chipped away at.

Active wondering has benefits in the workplace, in our relationships, and especially in healing our society at large.

How? Wondering breaks down our preconceived notions. It asks us to visualize the why’s to the ways of our world. It finds common ground amongst disparate groups. It brings us all back to the same playground dirt where we sat around, as equals, watching a worm squirm for the very first time.

Did you ever watch “How It’s Made?” Or listen to “Stuff You Should Know?” Or maybe listen to my personal favorite, Guy Raz’s podcast “How I Built This?” Each of these shows and podcasts sparks our wondering brain—they reach inside and tickle our imagination and our innate sense of creativity and curiosity. They bring us all back to the time in our childhood when we asked “why” about everything around us.

In today’s society, in which many aspects of life are noisy with unwavering opinions, unwillingness to change, and sheer set-in-stone stubbornness, a little flexibility of the mind is worth the daily practice.

So try it out. Wonder a bit more. Just once a day. Let me know what you wonder about. I’ll be right here, wondering away alongside you.

See you tomorrow.

Cover art via Unsplash