Don't Lose Your Sense of Wonder (by Duc Luu, July 07, 2000.)

I remember as a boy, each night after dinner time, kids in my little hometown used to gather around my father's house in the front porch just to listen to his stories. Dad was a great story teller. Books and stories once read, he almost never forgot any details. He would repeat words and actions and describe the emotions of each character exactly the same same way the author(s) did in the stories. Dad also had a great sense of conviction on the characters he described. One could always tell whether a character is a bad one or a good one. The tone of his voice, while telling the story, made sure his audience know for the fact. Despite all that, dad had a great memory too. It did not matter how many years had gone by once the story was read by him, he could always repeat the details as fresh and excited as if he had just read it the day before....
The town we lived in, as poor as many other towns, was faily a normal working class neighborhood. Cities and parts of certain towns were forced to be blacked out on certain days of the week, as part of the government's regulation at the time, was not unusual. Even on the days that the town were not supposed to be blacked-out, unneccessary city lights were rarely found around. Moments like that were a perfect opportunity to attract the beauty of the dark sky with countless stars flickering from above. As the old saying goes, one seems to have the tendendy to make the best out of every situation he faces, as a kid who was not unfamiliar with such situation in such a town, looking up the at the dark sky with countless stars whispering from above had always been part of my fantasy during my childhood.
I remembered in those nights, while dad's voice magically pulled all the kids' attention toward his stories, I used to lay on one of his home-made wooden benches, look up at the sky and the countless stars around that seemed to dance all over in my mind. For the moments like that, I used to let my wonderness go free. My usual imagination was that I would gather those stars, form and draw them in certain features, and connect them all together in certain ways to create some sort of forms of shapes in my own little world. Sometimes those stars looked like a dog, a cat; and other times they could be seen as a reindeer or a Santa Clause, and so on, whatever that might be in order to fit in a little boy's imagination at the time.
For the moments like that, I certainly blocked out everything in my mind but allowed myself to be part of that wonderful animated world I had in mind. I saw myself hiding, chasing, and running around those animals. I heard myself laughing and whispering to those animated shapes. It was such a great joy.
Only if I let my imagination go free, I would see myself as part of that beautiful endless sky, the system, the universe, the whole that I was living in. How beautiful it was with that sense of wonder from a little kid.
Although life goes on, mother nature of the cosmic world would force one to grow old, get sick, then leave behind everything in this world physically, no one could ever deny the fact that there were moments that one would still love to go back and live again with his joy and happiness; the joy and the beauty that could only come with a sense of wonder.
Even now, as an adult, I still have always wondered and imagined myself as part of that beautiful animated world, from time to time, that I once created as a kid. Although that was just for a few seconds, within that few seconds, I would still be able to see myself smile and whispering once again to my own little imagination world. Within that few, but orecious seconds, I would then find my way back to my wonderful thought and innocent childhood that I once left behind as a kid.
Do not lose your sense of wonder!

Duc Luu