Where Wonder Begins

"Wonder is the beginning of all wisdom," Aristotle wrote.  

"But where does wonder begin?" I ask, gazing into the cool, watery moonlight.

The stars are alive this evening. These gaseous orbs breathe a majesty into an otherwise unforgiving universe.

By gazing, I connect. I draw an invisible line between the tip of my anthropomorphic eyes to the celestial bodies that they are directed at. Every nanosecond, I stretch the line to extend further, beyond the spirals of this little galaxy to see what the other 99,999,999,999 galaxies are like.

Is this even the best one?

"Manny seems to think so,” I say.

But then, has he even given the other galaxies a fighting chance?

“Of course not, Carla,” I say to myself. "He is human.”

Humans can just be so confusing, you know? And they’re such fragile creatures. All it takes is one microscopic organism to bring their societies to the brink of collapse.

And yet…humans fascinate me. Call it a bad case of Stockholm Syndrome, but what makes them confusing also makes them curious.

Take, for example, humanity’s predilection to ignore the inconceivable vastness of the universe.

The other day, I was in the Park where I observed a curious child look up to her mother and ask, “If the stars are above the sky, what’s above the stars?”

And then it occurred to me:

That's where wonder begins.