Be Amazed and Delighted!

What fascinates you? Captures your attention, fires your imagination, drives you to learn more, and creates in you a sense of mystery and wonder?

I was playing around in my photo editor this morning, working with a photo I'd snapped of a Gerbera Daisy in my garden after a rain shower a few days ago. I dropped out all the background and adjusted the colors for more or less pure primary hues - blue, yellow, and red.

While not exactly high art, the result made me smile. It reminded me of the fascination I had as a child learning the color wheel. The idea that all the beautiful colors in the world can be traced back to just three primary colors was extraordinary knowledge for me. I had the keys to the kingdom! I could make colors...glorious, unlimited, vibrant, rich, joyous colors...from just three little pots of paint! Oh, the messes I made with that little bit of knowledge!

My fascination with the properties of color never went away. While most of the other kids were worried about whether to sharpen their crayons or peel and color sideways, I was happily exploring opposites - green and red, blue and orange, purple and yellow - and finally figuring out the difference between red-violet and violet-red.

As I reminesced about my joy, I wondered: When did I last feel that way? As adults, we seem to lose much of the sense of wonder we had when we were children, and I don't know why. We certainly haven't learned everything! There's a world of knowledge, a universe full of miracles and wonders that, like the mystery of color, can capture and fire our imaginations. How do we let ourselves miss that?

So here's my wish for today: Let's be fascinated with something. Find a mystery and delve into it with enthusiasm and wonder. Let's close our eyes for a moment, and open them as the eyes of a child, amazed and delighted.

"Let the fascination come on and rain all over me..." - Melissa Etheridge

Photo by Linda Davenport 2009