Nº173 The blunder of lost wonder ✨👥

Hello!

‘bout to board my flight back home to Holland after a week in the USA. This trip more than the previous 7 has come to represent more gratitude and wonder than anything else.

Any regular reader of this newsletter knows the reasons why I’ve struggled with these trips but let’s focus on something else, the fact that…

“As you get older, you might have to work a bit harder to find wonder — but it’s worth the effort” -Andrew Wood

I had thought of this after seeing a meme (for lack of a better word) about the focus on data instead of wonder. Spending time with kids has always inspired me to wonder. Bike rides do it every time. Music too. Lemme know if you know what I mean!

For this issue, I thought to share four ways to keep finding wonder as you continue to grow up from Andrew Wood:

1. 👥Lean into experiences and people as they happen to you — pay attention, get close in, use your eyes, ears, mouth, nose and hands to experience things as they happen. Put away your phone, forget about what you’re doing later that day, save for later the thing that made you sad that morning, and just be in the moment. I have a hunch that the best way to find wonder is to be curious and optimistic at the same time.
2. ✨ Work out what gives you a sense of wonder, and do what you can to engineer more of those moments. — Big skies, cheese on toast, salty single malts, three-chord guitar songs, mind-bending philosophy…