Why Wonder is important

Why is it important we give ourselves the opportunity to make art? Why do we give ourselves opportunities? Why is play fundamental to the building blocks of a child’s development, but we limit that same imagination growth as we age?

Mr. Rogers, when asked in an interview “Who has made a difference in your life?” He responded, “A lot of people who have allowed me to have some silence. And I don’t think we give that gift very much anymore. I am very concerned that our society is much more interested in information than wonder. In noise then silence. How do we do that? In our business, yours and mine, how do we encourage reflection?…Oh my, this is a noisy world.”

I love this thought of protecting our wonder. With wonder I immediately connect our willingness to play and make. Make good art, bad art, music, journaling, ideas, make space for people, all of the elements that make up humanity. Without wonder how do we ensure our creative wellbeing? 

To care for our creative wellbeing is to assign value to it, and if you have not yet committed to the knowledge that you are creative and that is important to pursue - no one else will assign that value for you.

I know, with all my being, that I am creative. I know this because I can reflect on how I devalued it in my youth and discredited my abilities to create and preserve as child’s play. And with the cultivating of other creatives in an art culture that encouraged wonder, it ensured my wealth in my creative practice. The vocations and heart felt interests we have never truly go away. Your will power to pursue them can be diluted if you allow the outside noise to invade your calling. 

YOUR pursuit of art is important. Just as important as mine and Mr. Rodgers. You are not alone in the noise of this world. 

Do not discredit the people in your life that give the gift of silence for reflection and wonder. Do not discredit yourself to preserve and move forward. Remembering that life has peaks and valleys, not smooth open roads is helpful when you realize you might have been reading the road map upside down in the first place.

I believe we are created for more that we can perceive. And tomorrow is a new day for another step in your journey.