There is a kind of poverty that doesn’t show up in statistics.
It is to go through life without letting it touch you.

We are very well informed.
We are hardly ever amazed.
And when wonder disappears, reality deteriorates. It ceases to be a mystery that stimulates.
It becomes something to be used.
It no longer challenges us, it entertains us.
It’s not that there is no light; we have lost the inner disposition to receive it.

Wonder is not naivety.
It is dialogue.
It is respect for being.

Aristotle saw it clearly: “Human beings must feel wonder and astonishment at what they experience” (Metaphysics, 982b).

It’s worth saying it plainly: we live in a culture of suspicion that values speed more than depth.
To be amazed seems childish or naïve.
Suspicion is a contagious “stance.”
Our gaze has hardened.
An invisible film has settled over the heart.

Nothing surprises us anymore.
Nothing offends us to the core.

Maturity has a child’s heart.
The weary adult loses the ability to let himself be “astonished” by the simplicity of truth.

Life then narrows, constricts.
One lives with information, but without presence.

With movement, but without encounter.
With a schedule, but without assimilation.

And the heart hardens.

WONDER FIXES THE GAZE

The trembling it provokes, encompasses both heart and mind;
it is a generative stillness that floods us.
To contemplate is to give rise to new colors, new sounds…
Changes the way we see. There is no going back.
To contemplate is to see in a different way.

Saint John Paul II expresses it forcefully: “It is necessary to cultivate (…) the capacity for wonder, for inner understanding, for contemplation” (Address to the Jubilee of Scientists, 2000).

Today there is much talk of rest, of disconnecting, of healthy pauses.
And yes we isolate ourselves but we close the floodgates many times.
We can sit in silence and still be inwardly in flight.
We can leave the phone on the table and remain fragmented within.
It is a process of fasting, of the soul “the soul’s autophagy” (says Byung-chul Han).

In this process the heart contemplates, it expands; it marvels at what is revealed.
It looks and sees, without wanting to possess.
It attends without consuming.

It remains in a timeless ecstasy; it suspends time:

a sunset,
a rainbow, a work of art…,
an inner revelation.

Our age does not fight wonder.
It redirect it.
It dissolves it, makes it fleeting.
It dilutes it in speed;
It dilutes it in the logic of immediate utility: where everything must serve, produce, or entertain.
And when everything is measured by performance, depth begins to look like a waste of time.

Then we stop inhabiting reality,
and begin to manage it.
The difference seems small.
It isn’t.

To inhabit is to receive, to welcome.
To manage is to control.
To inhabit implies service in relationship.
To manage implies domination.

When a person stops welcoming,
one loses a sense of encounter with the world and oneself.
One stops listening and only responds.
One stops looking and only classifies.
One stops standing before what is real and retreats into one’s own fantasy.

Sensitivity is diminished,
but it ends up affecting ethics.
If wonder disappears,
the other becomes a function.
If contemplation disappears,
the world becomes a stage.

We no longer see persons,
but roles.
We no longer see facts,
but noise.
We no longer see faces,
but surfaces.

And so, little by little, relationships grow cold.
Presence is lacking.
The gaze withdraws or wears out.
And a worn-out gaze cannot sustain respect.

The first way of seeing justly is the gaze of someone who has something/or someone -to discover.
This is not a metaphor.
It is a moral truth.
You cannot love what you merely pass through.
You cannot understand anyone if you have first reduced them to a function or a label.

That is why contemplation is not: to escape.
It is discipline. It is order, hierarchy.
It calls for less haste, less inner noise.
It asks something more difficult: to remain.

To remain
Before doubt,
Before a questioning face,
Before pain,
Before what has been discovered.

There emerges the wisdom of not devouring experience.
Because everything deteriorates when reduced to something consumable:

The ability to recognize what is valuable.

-Interior life.

-Relationships.

Everything can be trivial or decisive.
Everything depends on how it is seen.
Here lies the decisive turn.

Wonder does not only beautify life.
It sets it right.
Because whoever is capable of wonder
recognizes that not everything belongs to oneself.
And whoever contemplates
learns not to devour reality…

This way of existing implies a shift in how we live and relate to reality:

1. It changes the way we work:
   Work ceases to be mere performance
   and becomes service, form, care.
2. It changes the way we listen:
   The other ceases to be a means and recovers their own weight.
3. It changes the way we suffer:
   Pain ceases to be a system failure and becomes a place to inhabit.
4. It even changes the relationship with oneself:
   The self-ceases to be a narcissistic project and begins to be a non-delegable responsibility.

WONDER EXPANDS.

CONTEMPLATION ORDERS.

There is another dimension to our reality:
– A density that cannot be reduced.
– A beauty that cannot be possessed.
– A truth that appears only with respect.

Perhaps the deeper problem is not that we do not see.
Perhaps the problem is that we have stopped looking.

WONDER IS THE SOUL’S FIRST COURTESY.
CONTEMPLATION, ITS MOST MATURE FORM OF RESPECT.

And when a person recoveres that gaze, a person passes through reality honoring it.