Wonder is the beginning of wisdom…
It was either Socrates or Plato who said:
“Wonder is the beginning of wisdom…”
This touches something I see in many of my clients — and often in myself: we want certainty. We want to know, rather than to feel.
In our constant search for knowing, we no longer allow ourselves to wonder and explore. We become blocked by the need for answers, weighed down by doubt. Why?
Well... It’s very scary not to know...
In one of my favourite books, Letters to a Young Poet, Rainer Maria Rilke talks about embracing uncertainty by "living the questions". He says rather than demanding immediate answers, allow life to unfold naturally.
“And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer”.
Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
What I read in this is that it’s truly okay not to be certain. It is okay to live in a space of unanswered questions, to walk a path where you are not yet fully confident.
Allowing yourself to explore, to experience, to live the questions, opens the door to answers your mind alone could never conceive and where confidence can grow alongside your experience.
Why? Because they are in your body.
Our need to know in advance often keeps us from discovering the beauty of the unimaginable. When we allow ourselves not to know — and to be at ease with that — we become receptive to our surroundings. We begin to truly pay attention and life becomes spontaneous.
In that openness and wonder, we can be surprised: by an idea, an encounter, an opportunity, or even a feeling.
Sending many wondrous questions your way and many possibilities to live with them.
Leander
PS: If you are curious to explore and delve into your relationship to wonder, certainty and uncertainty… Book a Session >> We can go in via the body and see what the body wants to reveal about these topics.