On Being Astonished

“Every realm of nature is wonderful” - Aristotle (The Parts of Animals)

A few months ago, I came across the pre-publication notice of Oliver Burkeman’s book, Four Thousand Weeks. I immediately recognised that the title refers to, roughly, the average human lifespan in weeks. While I haven’t read the book, I can anticipate the message that it is likely to convey: life is short, you won’t be able to accomplish everything you want, it’s probably best to do things for their own sake and live in the present. Or something like that. Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics and the Epicureans basically covered all of this 104,000 weeks ago. So I recommend reading the ancients, instead.

With that said, the anticipated answer that Burkeman provides leaves us with a gap: what are the things which are intrinsically valuable? In a previous post, Earthly Belonging, I partly touch on the answer: this place, our planet, existence itself, is intrinsically valuable. It’s what’s here now. It is worthwhile, therefore, to dedicate ourselves to it, and not completely blunder into the dark forever-after. So naturally, you may now ask, in what way shall I dedicate myself to my existence? I think part of the answer lies in continously being astonished. The Oxford Dictionary of English defines the verb astonish as surprise or impress (someone) greatly. The definition is derived from “early 16th century (as astonished, in the sense ‘stunned, bewildered, dismayed’): from obselete astone ‘stun, stupefy’, from Old French estoner, based on Latin ex- meaning ‘out of, from’ and tonare ‘to thunder’.”

The old Latin origin is particularly striking (no pun intended). To be astonished is to be thunderstruck–to be impressed greatly. Here we may raise a further two questions: To be impressed greatly by what? And two, in what way? The answer to the first question is obvious, following from the previous paragraph: To be thunderstruck by existence itself, and all that it contains. Whereas the answer to the second question is slightly more nuanced. From my own experience, astonishment occurs when I begin to perceive myself and the world in a new way, in a way I had not conceived of before. In a way that astonishes me. Astonishment has the capacity to lead to the abandonment of old views, beliefs, thoughts and even feelings about one’s life and the world. Such old beliefs may no longer hold value, or may no longer be true in light of new evidence. To allow ourselves to be astonished by nature means that we can exist in a perpetual state of curiosity, where we sustain the desire to better know nature and ourselves. To not be deprived of knowing ourselves, and to keep the mood alive and well, so that we may allow ourselves a chance to flourish. Because it’s like Heraclitus said, “the gods are also here”.