I Wonder

Something about this time of year is almost magical.  One morning you wake up, and the oppressive summer heat has been changed to a slight chill.  Sometimes, in the early morning, when the sun is overtaking the last twinkling stars, you can still see the moon shining proudly down from the clear blue sky.  Often times, it stirs a bit of wonder in me.

I think about space, about the position of the planets, the speed at which we’re moving, the size of our earth, the distance of the moon, and the speed of our rotation.  Did you know that if any of these factors were off by a small margin, our planet would no longer support life?  Say what you will about a big bang, but as an engineer, I’ve never come across a system so complex that didn’t have a designer.

For thousands and thousands of years, people have looked up at the same moon that I look up at.  It’s amazing to me that people thousands of miles away can still see the same moon that I look at, on account of its distance from the earth.  Sometimes it looks like you could almost touch it, yet the fastest trip any human has ever made to it took over 3 days.

There’s something special about these brief moments of wonder and clarity.  I’ve noticed that as an adult they are far fewer in number and frequency.  My children have them far more often than I do, and it takes much less to induce them.  With Griffin, it merely took driving by a line of semi trucks to render him wide-eyed and awestruck.  With Gage, driving by a moving train will have him fighting to get out of his seat.  You can see it on their little faces on Christmas morning or on vacation at a water park.

I miss having that kind of wonder and excitement.  Do we become too busy as adults to marvel at our surroundings?  Do we become so overwhelmed by the day to day demands that we don’t even see the little things that could brighten our day?

I wonder.