A Brief Description of the Feeling of Wonder
Jeaniqua Stanford January 17, 2013 ACP 110-02 Definition Paper Wonder is a feeling of curiosity, amazement, and surprise. Wonder can happen at any given moment, but most times it is not truly wonder. Most times when someone believes something as wonderful, they simply mistake it for wonderful. Instead what they are feeling is simply curiosity or amazement. Wonder is so much deeper than those simple emotions, it is to a point that when you feel wonder you become speechless. When you see, feel, hear, touch, or taste something that makes you feel speechless, like you literally have no words that can explain how you are feeling.
If you ask people what wonder is, you will stump them. They will not know how to explain what exactly they feel when they feel wonder. Wonder is one of those emotions that is hard to explain. You know it when you feel it but you cannot explain it. In the ACP 11O-02 course at Roosevelt University, the students were asked what they believed wonder was. The students looked around, some even looked out the window, hoping that they would not be called on. This question is not one that is asked every day, so people do not normally have an answer ready for it.
They probably would have to think about it for a long time until they can sum up at least one sentence for what wonder is. When sitting in the ACP course, the general definition of wonder that came from the discussion, was something that makes you feel amazement. Something that is wonderful to most people would be birth, or pregnancy. The whole process of having a child, psychically having it, is speechless. Mothers say that it hurts like nothing they have ever felt, but the emotion they feel once it is over and they get to hold the life they have been nurturing for nine months, is indescribable.
The joy that takes over their faces is a moment that should be remembered, and most likely is. Wondrous things are everywhere in the world and if a person just happens to be at the right and at the right time, than they might get to experience it. It is hard to say that something inanimate is wonderful, because it is hard to explain. Trying to find the words to say what a person feels about life itself is difficult. It is wonderful because even though it is explained and can be scientifically described, words truly cannot describe life.
Yes, life is the way people go about living on the earth and what they do, but what else is it? How exactly did it happen? Religious people would say that God created man, the planet, and everything else on it. But then scientists would say that we evolved from other beings that roamed the earth before us. If you go for the scientists’ thoughts on life, than the religious people could easily counter that argument with a question on who created everything that we evolved from. Wonder is that emotion that everybody confuses with other things, is it really wonder or is it amazement.
Can you explain how you feel or are there no words for how you feel? Those are the questions people need to ask when thinking about what is wonderful to them. The definition of wonder is something that leaves you speechless and curious for more information on it. Life is the one thing that is wondrous to most people because it is unexplainable. A person can guess all they want about how life came about, but they will never find the true answer of it, unless they find someone or something that has been alive for the entirety of earth’s existence.
