To admire.

Maybe that is the art of living.

When did we stop being amazed by the simple fact that we are here?

Seriously.

Every morning, a gigantic ball of fire rises into the sky, birds fly without ever having taken a flying lesson, trees somehow know exactly when to let go of their leaves and meanwhile, we are walking through the supermarket annoyed because someone parked their shopping cart sideways in the aisle.

Adulthood. Beautiful concept.

Lately, I have been thinking a lot about wonder.

Not admiration in the way we admire people on Instagram because they have a beautiful house, a perfect body, or a beige kitchen with six identical coffee cups.

I mean real wonder.

The kind we naturally carried within us as children.

Do you remember?

A bird was special.
Your new shoes were special.
A stick you found outside could suddenly become a magic wand, a sword, and a walking stick all at once.
The moon was enormous.
The voices of your family felt familiar and special.
A sparkling stone came home with you as if you had just made an archaeological discovery of global importance.

Nobody had to teach us how to wonder.

We were wonder.

And maybe that is exactly what we have slowly lost somewhere along the way.

We did not stop looking. We stopped seeing.

The older we get, the more life begins to pile up.

Experiences. Responsibilities. Disappointments. Schedules. Relationships. Work. Bills. Things that did not turn out the way we hoped they would.

And somewhere between “I still need to reply to that email” and “why am I holding my phone again?” something disappears.

Not all at once.

Very slowly.

Our sense of wonder.

We still look at the sky, but while we do, we are thinking about tomorrow.

We walk through a forest while replaying a conversation from last Tuesday in our heads.

We sit next to someone we love and only half listen because our brain is busy trying to solve three problems that do not even exist yet.

Our body is here.

But us?

We are already somewhere else.

And perhaps that is why wonder is so much more than simply finding something beautiful.

Wonder requires presence.

You cannot truly be in awe of something while being completely trapped in yesterday or tomorrow.

Wonder always happens now.

Nature has come up with something rather inconvenient for us

Nature simply refuses to participate in our rush.

A tree does not think:

Shit, I am falling behind in my personal development.

A bird does not sit on a branch analysing whether it sang the right note yesterday.

A flower does not have a five-year plan.

A bee probably does not have a vision board either.

They are simply there.

Fully.

And maybe that is why nature touches us so deeply.

Because again and again, it shows us what we have forgotten:

what it feels like to be present.

When you truly look at a bird, the shape of a cloud, sunlight falling on one exact patch of earth, or the eyes of an animal, something becomes quiet for a moment.

Not necessarily around you.

But inside you.

That endless mental carnival stops spinning for a second.

No yesterday.

No later.

Just this.

And suddenly, you begin to notice how much you normally miss.

The colour of the sky.

The sound of leaves.

A certain smell.

How warm the sun actually feels on your skin.

The way someone laughs.

Your mother’s face.

The voice of someone you love.

All things we somehow assume will still be there tomorrow.

But no moment ever returns in exactly the same way.

And there is something deeply confronting and incredibly beautiful about that to me:

maybe we do not need to keep making life bigger.
Maybe we need to become better at seeing what is already here.

My mother always told me: do not let your inner child become bitter

That sentence has become a kind of red thread running through my life.

No matter what happens to you:

do not let your inner child become bitter.

And the older I get, the more I understand what she meant.

Protecting your inner child does not mean moving through life naïvely.

It does not mean pretending pain does not exist either.

Quite the opposite.

Life can shake you up in ways you never expected.

But maybe our strength lies precisely in the fact that, after everything we have been through, we can still say:

“Wow, look at the moon.”

We can still laugh loudly.

Still be curious.

Still pick up a stone simply because it is beautiful.

Still get excited about a sunset as if the sun organised the entire spectacle especially for us.

That is not naïveté.

It is something else entirely.

It is refusing to let life take away your capacity for wonder.

Maybe wealth is measured by how much you can still feel

We are often taught to measure wealth in possessions.

More money.
More things.
More travel.
More success.

But I am starting to believe more and more that another kind of wealth exists.

How much are you still able to experience?

Can you drink a cup of coffee without doing three other things at the same time?

Can you look someone in the eyes when they are speaking to you?

Can you go for a walk without immediately filling every quiet moment with your phone?

Can you sit somewhere and simply look?

No pictures.

No posting.

No analysing.

Just…

being there.

Because the moment you do, something beautiful happens.

The world does not necessarily become more beautiful.

You become more receptive to its beauty.

And that difference is enormous.

Maybe that is why some people seem to see so much beauty even when their lives are far from perfect.

Not because they are luckier.

But because they have protected their ability to wonder.

They have not completely kicked their inner child out of the house.

It still gets to come outside sometimes.

The present moment is actually a very strange place

We constantly talk about the past and the future.

What happened.

What might happen.

What we should have said.

Who we want to become.

Where we want to be in five years.

While life itself only ever happens in one place:

here.

This moment.

And then this moment.

And then another new moment.

It almost sounds too simple.

Maybe that is why we find it so difficult.

Our minds love complexity.

They want to analyse, predict, solve, and control.

Give your mind five minutes of silence and suddenly it brings up an embarrassing moment from 2014 that you thought everyone had forgotten about years ago.

Thanks, brain.

But when we learn to be present, space begins to appear between all those thoughts.

Space in which we can feel again.

Look.

Listen.

And wonder.

Wonder is a form of self-love to me

Because self-love, to me, is not only about setting boundaries, choosing yourself, or speaking kindly to yourself.

It is also about allowing yourself to be here.

Not constantly being on your way to a better version of yourself.

Not having to use every minute productively.

Not always thinking:

When I finally get there, then I can enjoy my life.

No.

Now.

This life.

This sky.

This version of you.

This season.

These people.

This day.

Because maybe you do not need a more spectacular life at all.

Maybe sometimes you simply need to learn to look at it again with the same eyes you once used to look at a ladybird.

So let that child sit in the front seat every now and then

Walk a little slower.

Look at the sky.

Study a tree.

Sit beside someone without bringing your phone into the moment.

Look your animal in the eyes.

Write something by hand.

Go outside without every minute needing a destination.

Do something completely useless that makes you happy.

Pick up that beautiful stone again if you want to.

No one is stopping you.

Because somewhere deep down, I believe that the ability to wonder is one of the greatest forms of freedom.

It makes an ordinary life extraordinary.

A simple walk rich.

A conversation precious.

A Tuesday afternoon meaningful.

And maybe that is the magic we are all searching for.

Not something we need to find.

But something we need to learn to see again.

Keep wondering.
Stay curious.
Protect that soft, stubborn child within you.

Because life does not simply lose its colour.

Sometimes we have just forgotten how to really look.

And maybe growing up is not about learning to become less of a child.

Maybe it is learning how, after everything life shows you, to still protect your sense of wonder.

BIG HUGG DONNA.