Albert Knox says “it seems as if in the process of growing up we lose the ability to wonder about the world.” It seems to me, that he’s trying to say that throughout the process of growing up, we stop wondering about the world and stop questioning ourselves about life’s questions. We may lose our sense of curiosity because we would start experiencing and discovering less.
As we grow older, we will learn to adapt to our surroundings and we wouldn’t ponder as much about life as we did before. Although, we will ask ourselves questions on a day to day bases. Because in our time, everyone’s main focus is to work for money in order to survive. Not a lot of people would really give a chance into thinking about life. The pressure put onto people nowadays have changed their focus. We have not lost the ability to wonder about life, but rather the time we allow ourselves to wonder about life is absolutely minimal. Also, most of the questions are preferred to be left unanswered rather than having to search for the answers.
I suppose what Albert Knox is trying to say is that as we grow older, we take the things in life for granted therefore we wouldn’t really wonder. In chapter 2, page 19 of Sophie’s World, Sophie asks her mom if she found it “astonishing to be alive” and although her mom didn’t give her a straight response, it’s quite obvious she never gave time to think about it or really cared about it. This proves that we think that our everyday existence is insignificant but it still backs up my point that people take things for granted.
People do not lose their capability into wondering, but rather, they lose time to actually wonder about things. But I also think what affects people’s wonder about the world is what they think about rather than the ability to wonder. When being a child, we have more time to wonder about life’s questions and a lot more. We come across new experiences and discoveries and we wonder about its origins. But when a teenager, a lot of the things we considered as “new” has already become “old” to us, therefore we wouldn’t ponder much about things. But because being a teenager, many of the focuses in life is studying and wondering what kinds of jobs we’re going to get in order to support ourselves and our families, we wouldn’t have time to wonder about life or care about it. Being an adult, most of the time is just working and trying to earn as much money to support the family and manage the money spent. There won’t possibly be enough time to wonder about life’s questions. But when near death, or retired, we’re given more time to think, and once more, we’d think about all the questions in life. I guess that wondering about life is more like a one time cycle. Unless, one day, just like Sophie, we randomly recieve letters asking us philosophical questions like "Where does the world come from", then perhaps we'd give some time to think and wonder about these questions. But then again, I'm not sure there will be a final answer to these questions.
I somewhat agree with Albert Knox when he says “it seems as if in the process of growing up we lose the ability to wonder about the world.” Because he only says it seems, and that's because the things to wonder about has reduced and there’s not enough time. But the ability to wonder is never loss.
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4 comments:
I agree that it only seems as if as we grow up we lose the ability to wonder. Without the word "seems" in the statement, it would be completely and entirely incorrect.
You are right that we have less to wonder about as we grow up but I think it is also due to the fact that older people wonder less obviously than children as they don't want it to seem as though they don't know, for example, and also how you mentioned that they have less time to do so (I didn't think of that point so thank you for pointing it out).
I suppose children have much more time in their life to wonder while adults rush around on their busy schedules, worrying about things in their spare time while children wonder in theirs.
In the end, this ALL contributes to the appearance that older people have lost the ability to wonder, which I must admit is quite a distressing thought..
"It seems as if we lose our ability to wonder as we grow up" I agree with you and Julia when you say that it only SEEMS like we lose the ability to wonder, but in fact it is just cause we no longer have the time to wonder as much anymore as we grow older due to other things that occupy your time.
I think that you could've used a few more examples in your answer to back up your points, which would've made your answer even better.
I really liked the last paragraph in your essay because it made me realise the implication that the single word, “seems”, has. (Why had I had not taken into consideration before? It didn't occur to me that this was an important word in the phrase, but now that you say it, I realise its significance.)
I agree that it only "seems" like people lose the ability to wonder, because like I mentioned in my own post as well, I also feel that we still have this ability to wonder even when we grow older - it is simply just that we do not/cannot give ourselves any time to think about "life". I also agree with the view that without the word "seems", the sentence would be incorrect.
However, at first, I was actually unsure if I agreed with your interpretation of this word. I questioned if Albert Knox actually meant the word "seems" in this way. To quote the next sentence along with this prompt, the Knox says that:
"It seems as if in the process of growing up we lose the ability to wonder about the world. And in doing so we lose something central - something philosophers try to restore."
When I re-read these two sentences, I felt that Knox could not mean that we "lose something central" in LOOKING AS THOUGH we have lost the ability. Had he not simply used the word "It seems as if" to mean "I think that", or something of that sort?
I thought about this for a while and re-read sentence that follows the above, which is:
“For somewhere inside ourselves, something tells us that life is a huge mystery”
And then I realized that he was indeed meaning that we DON’T lose the ability to wonder, just like you said. (We just “seem” like it on the surface.) He is saying that we have this ability, this “something that tells us that life is a huge mystery”, “somewhere inside ourselves” all along – it is not lost.
Therefore after opposing my own questioning of the meaning of the word “seems”, I have reached the conclusion that like you said, this sentence indeed means that he is saying that it only ostensibly seems like we have lost the ability – and that if you search “somewhere inside ourselves”, we will find that it is still there.
This conclusion is quite different to my original post, because I had unconsciously ignored the word “seems” – but your post has allowed me to realise that he didn’t mean that we actually DO lose the ability. This is the exact reason why he says “”For various reasons most people get so caught up in everyday affairs that their astonishment at the world gets PUSHED INTO THE BACKGROUND”. He doesn’t say that it is “LOST” – just that it is simply hidden away.
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