“We never actually lose the sense of wonder.  We just let it fall into disuse.  It resurfaces now and then to be put to use as we try to decide what meaning we shall give to life” – Dorothy Rowe (The Successful Self)

When I read this, only a couple of days ago, as I finished one of transformational books of my life, I was stunned by it’s simplicity,  and truth.  It helped explain why I’ve experienced my own sense of heightened awareness during recent months.  I liken it to travelling, which makes me question if this isn’t a major reason many of us like to travel, to reconnect with our own inner sense of wonder?  To marvel at mountains at sunset in the Tetons, to smell freshly baking bread in the streets of France, or coffee in an Italian café (there I go thinking ‘food’ again!), or most recently listening to the tropical birds at sunrise with the smell of rainforest in my nostrils.  These stir my sense of wonder.

It doesn’t escape my thoughts that if it weren’t for cancer, I may not have read this marvellous book, or had a chance to observe and contemplate so many other things.  In The Successful Self, Dorothy Rowe also explains how it can be that I have not experienced the classic Kubler-Ross ‘stages of loss’, anger, denial, etc.  This has reassured me I am not in denial, or shock, as I once thought possible, that I have been able to accept what is happening in the moment and have the inner knowledge it will not destroy me.

Long live our sense of wonder, and may we access it easily and often!