In addition to writing fiction and poetry, Belinda Hubert is currently working on a novel, titled Shrink Wrapped and a collection of short stories about life in the Midwest. She works as a clinical psychologist
in a private practice in Lowell, Indiana.
Wonder
There’s nothing new under the sun and yet each day is really a new one. Each soul is new. Every time someone sees a truth - genuinely discovers it for themselves, or better yet, with someone else - it’s brand new and shiny in the world. One of my children’s young adult friends once said he failed to see what the big deal is about little kids. What is so fun about watching them find a grasshopper? He already knows about grasshoppers.
I dislike when people spout what they know as if it is the final pronouncement. How is anyone ever satisfied with this one fragment of truth? Sure what someone knows to be true is true from that one perspective, and is marvelous. If it’s a kernel gleaned from the passages of a great work, or a new one beautifully crafted, even better. And so are an infinite number of other things true. Why would the goal be to reach mastery of some thing like a doctrine or field of study, then go forth to pronounce judgements from only that lense? Certainly it’s fun, fun, fun to find truths only observable through a specific lense. We just shouldn’t forget that those truths are a tiny part of the whole ever changing picture. How is it that any person chooses not to be excited by the mystery of all that? Doesn’t celebrate the fact that the process of discovery will take as many lifetimes as there are humans?
The fact is, we can only see what these eyes perceive (enhanced by whatever invention is now available), hear this range of sound with these human ears, sense what we are able with these limited senses (perhaps also somehow enhanced). Our lense of experience and bias is unique, beautiful and limited. Which is another layer of why there will always be an infinite number of other perspectives. I am enchanted to rediscover something I “know” through new eyes.
Those sweet kids who delight in everything they find in the world are reminders of how little any of us actually knows. Why wouldn’t it be ok with a grown up to re-experience all she can with the wonder of a three year old child? To not know it all? Can we not celebrate being wise enough to be naive? Mature enough to be child like? To be wide open to wonder? About everything. The same old everything we experience and see every day. Nothing new under the sun is brand spankin’ new every single second of every hour of every single day. How cool is that?