As long as we think, we wonder.

By saying that "It seems as if in the process of growing up we lose the ability to wonder about the world" Albert Knox means that when we as children grow up, fewer and fewer things become strange and new to us. This is because everything we normally see around us has become the "norm", thus our curiosity about such things is diminished. When we are young, everything around us is still new and strange which means that we want to discover what it is and understand more about it.

I do not think that anyone would ever lose their curiosity for new things, because everyone is interested by something. Whenever something related to their interest shows up, they would be keen to find out more about it. Like I mentioned earlier, we lose our sense of curiosity because we have conformed to society's standards. By this I mean that everyone has given out a mold of what a dog looks like and anything different is given a label of "subnormal". People tend to ignore even the "subnormal" because even then they know that at the end of the day it is still a dog, simply another category of dog. Society itself has accepted as a "norm" what dogs look like, which means that people are no longer curious about dogs in general. Sure, there will always be those few people who are curious about dogs and wish to know more, but as a whole, people no longer feel the need to find out more because society has told them that this is what a dog is.

Another reason that people's curiosity is diminished is not so much because they have lost the ability to wonder, but because they have no time for it. Many people feel that work and family are more important and thus they focus most of their attention upon these things. These people may still excel in the faculty of wonder, but their time spent in that faculty is reduced. They may one day randomly ask themselves "Why am I content or discontent?". This in itself is an example of wonder. People ask themselves questions all the time, and each time they do so it is an example of their ability to wonder. Obviously then, people have not lost their ability to wonder as they grow up.

I think the major difference lies within what we wonder about, rather than our ability to wonder. A child wonders about all the new things he has seen and experienced. It is like splitting the faculty of wonder into levels. What a child wonders about can be considered as level 1, because it is simply the beginning. Say that child grows up and is now a teenager. We can call this level 2. At level 2, he may wonder less about the day to day material objects. Instead he may wonder about relationships between people and wonder about school and its uses. When he then grows up into an adult, he would have experienced much of what he encounters everyday, so he does not feel compelled to wonder about those things. Instead we can say that he has entered level 3 and now wonders more about his life in general. For example he may think to himself "What can I do with my life?". This so called levelling up keeps going until we die. When we are still young, there is so much to experience, and so it is on a much more general scope. As we grow older, we are much more directed by our interests and our wants, so the range of our wondering is diminished.

Albert Knox is correct in saying that "As we grow up, we seem to lose the ability to wonder." But the key word to remember there is seem. We only seem to wonder less because the range of things we wonder about is smaller. The bottom line is that as long as we can think, we will wonder.