Caspar Henderson - A New Map of Wonders: A Journey in Search of Modern Marvels

Celebrate. Yes, but what?

Friedrich Hlderlin

Why, why do we feel this sweet sensation of joy?

Elizabeth Bishop

O ne morning in early spring I came downstairs with my young daughter to find a brilliant pool of light on the kitchen ceiling. At first I couldnt account for this strange thing, which wobbled, reformed and was momentarily darkened by shadows. Slowly, I worked out what was going on. The Sun, which had been hidden by clouds on many previous days, had broken free and risen high enough to illuminate the windows of a building facing towards it. And those windows reflected the light through the undulating branches of a tree down onto another reflective surface that happened to be angled in just such a way as to bounce the branch-shadowed light up through our kitchen window and onto the ceiling.

Sometimes it takes extreme or unusual circumstances to make ordinary things seem wonderful. In the case of the poet Ko Un, for instance, a postage stamp-sized patch of sunlight on the wall of his cell in the Korean military prison in which he was being held was enough to rekindle a sense of wonder and hope, even as he feared for his life. But there was nothing extreme about my circumstances that morning. I didnt fear for my life. I wasnt in some breathtakingly beautiful or exotic location. It was a bog-standard working Tuesday. Or Wednesday. Or some other day. I forget. At any rate, there was nothing extraordinary about the time and place or, it might seem, the phenomenon. Who hasnt seen sunlight dappling on a wall and wondered how the effect occurs? Who, in the climate in which I live, hasnt felt elated when the sun finally appears after many dark days?

Still, my sense of wonder of being completely awake was exceptional. Being a bit geeky, I knew that the patch of light and shadow-play, so gentle and so alive, was created by trillions of photons (particles of light) flowing from a stupendous thermonuclear explosion tens of millions of miles away. And I knew that those photons were a tiny proportion of a vastly larger number pouring silently onto the planet every second at a speed far beyond anyones power to visualize. As Ko Un writes in another poem, I am gazing at the invisible movements of all things.

The presence of my daughter on that morning made the moment especially joyous for me. She was five at the time, and the patch of light was probably no more and no less remarkable to her than many things that a five-year-old sees in any given week, from postmen to fish fingers. But she saw that her father was laughing, decided that something must be funny, and laughed too. So love was there, and that was wonderful. But it was not the whole story.

The experience in the kitchen set me thinking about wonder itself about what prompts it and how we experience it, about how it elusive it can be, about how there are so many ways in which it can be closed down and destroyed, but also how it can impart a sense of meaning and be constitutive of a life well lived.