When we lose the wonder

Photo credit: Booker T. Sessoms, 2014

I noticed him right away as we pulled into the station: a lanky guy with big earphones, dancing and singing to a beat only he could hear.

If he had been a teenager, I wouldn’t have paid much attention. But he wasn’t. He was an elderly man in khakis and a button-down shirt. He wasn’t supposed to enjoy music. He wasn’t supposed to just lose himself to joy.

I thought of him later as I sat in the backseat of a friend’s car with my daughter, cruising down the highway, all four of us in the car bellowing out whatever song we had just queued up. “Thank you,” my adult child suddenly turned to me and said, “for never asking me to stop singing along.” And as she said it, I realized that I really hadn’t, and that this actually is a big deal.

Truth is, as a society, we ask each other to stop singing along all the time. Cynicism passes for being clever. Whataboutism kills just about any expression of joy. And it is definitely true that there is much to be both cynical and relativist about. With an ongoing genocide, how can we even contemplate allowing ourselves to feel anything other than despair? But even before that, ongoing inequality, environmental degradation, wanton expressions of violence, exclusion and greed. In this context, what is there even to express wonder about?

These are real questions. “Stay in the present” and “lean into joy” can sound like cowardice or a deliberate copout: ways to avoid saying out loud what might expose us to criticism, discomfort, and potentially hurt.

But wonder and joy are also real. Caterpillars transforming into butterflies. Flowers blooming. Harmonies and lyrics that existed in someone’s body before they made it into our devices to sing along to and dance. When we deliberately turn away from these everyday miracles, we give space only to that which remains.

I wish on all of us the ability to lean into the world we want. I wish on all of us a family that never asks us to stop singing along. I wish on all of us the ability to choose joy.