Personally, I am led to believe that Albert Knox states that people beyond their childhood have “lost the ability to wonder” and therefore are unable to ponder on philosophical questions such as ‘How was the world created?’. In actual fact, we have not lost it at all. It is just that we are increasingly burdened with the world and, therefore, are forced to shelter our inquisitive nature to keep up with our fast paced surroundings. We simply cannot afford to indulge in such childlike luxuries. True, we may conform to the familiarity of the world. However, because we cannot survive a day with questions constantly orbiting our minds, we try to avoid them. If adults were constantly amazed by a “Bow-wow”, it would surely interfere and disrupt our daily activities (for example, car driving). There is an actual need to be “world–weary”.
My relative once told me that a common question asked in nursing homes is “Is there a life after death?”. This shows that once we have more time to focus on other things, with the stress of relationships and daily agendas taken away from us, we begin to wonder constantly as if we were children again.
This, of course, does not mean that we are only capable of wondering during our childhood and senior years. We are absolutely able to “climb up the fine hairs” any time we want, even “in the process of growing up”. I disagree that we “work… ever deeper into the fur” and “stay” there. The faculty of wonder is retrievable. To me, “the rabbit’s fine hairs” operate like an adjustable strap. We are able to adjust our thoughts at any time or way. We can either adjust it longer; meaning that we climb up the fine hairs and become temporary philosophers and indulge in the faculty of wonder, or shorter; meaning that we settle down into the fur and accept the world as it is.
In conclusion, I believe that we never will lose our ability to wonder. It is, instead, buried by the duties of every day life. However we can choose to wonder whenever we want; it doesn’t matter if you are in the process of growing up or have finished growing up. It is our mind and it is our own free will.
2 comments:
I really like how you compare the rabbit's fine hair to an adjustable strap. I agree with you that it really is up to us on what we choose to wonder about. However I am curious as to how wondering is a 'luxury'. Do we really enjoy the dissonance produced by our unanswered questions? Or is it simply a freedom to be able to speculate?
I agree with you about the fact that we do not lose the ability to wonder at all but because we tend to focus on other aspects, we just tend to slip our wonder about things. In addition, I agree that we can wonder continuously at any occasion as it is our own free will. But although these wonders might be hidden by the duty of everyday life, it could also be that as we are growing up, we receive more information and the answers from all the questions we were thinking so we tend to wonder less than when we were a child. We would try to learn new things and this does not stop us to wonder constantly.
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