Wonders of Wonderment
“I believe that a leaf of grass is no less than the journey work of the stars. And the pismire is equally perfect, and the grain of sand, and the egg of the wren…”
(Initial lines from section 31 of the “Song of Myself” [1982 version] by Walt Whitman.)
People often complain of boredom and monotony, the two horrible feelings that make the life miserable. And although there is difference between the two as boredom is defined as disinterest in some activity, whereas, monotony refers to a lack of interest because of doing the same work repeatedly, but both (feelings) are believed to be negative factors that can have adverse effects on our lives including on our morale, perceptions, performance and quality of work.
An often cited reason behind our feelings of disinterest or lack of interest is that we get stuck in a rut. Our routine becomes like this:
We get up
We survive
We go to bed.
In simple words, it is like getting stranded or trapped in the middle of nowhere. You end each day feeling tired and knocked down— or even start the day that way. Nothing excites you or challenges you. Nothing enlivens you. There is nothing but despair and hopelessness in your life. You don’t feel mentally stimulated or creative.
So the crucial question that arise in the mind is:
How to get rid of this rut that makes life so miserable and so horrible?
To know the answer we would have to refer to the ideas of the Walt Whitman an American poet, essayist, and journalist who is considered one of the most influential poets in American history.
He is also best known for his The verse collection Leaves of Grass that is a collection of poetry first presented as a group of 12 poems published anonymously in 1855.
Included in this collection is the poem “Song of Myself,” taken from his above titled collections of poems, that makes it evident that universe is not dead matter, but full of life and meaning. Nature has patterns that fit together like a well-built house and we just need to discover these patterns and wonder the intricacies of nature. Thus poem emphasizes the unity of a human with tangible and intangible. Life is full of wonderful things, surprises and miracles but even then we have managed to invent boredom because we are often unable or refuse to see them.
Thus the solution to the problem of our boredom and lethargy is simple: to imitate the Whitman who tell us that he loves the earth, the flora and fauna of the earth, the moon and stars, the sea, and all other elements of nature. He also believes that man is nature’s child and that man and nature must never be disjoined because they are one and the same as well dependent on each other.
Here science also comes in support of the poet. American plant ecologist, botanist, and taxonomist Frederik Clements’ metaphysical beliefs about superorganisms gave rise, for example, to our modern conception of a “foodweb” which means each living thing in an ecosystem is part of multiple food chains where one living organism eats another organism, and later that organism is consumed by another larger organism as in the movie “Lion King” Mufasa also expounds/pontificates:
“when we die we become the grass and the antelope eat the grass. So we are all connected.” Basically, lion eats antelope. Lion dies and (as the hyenas then eat the lion, and then poop on the ground, grass grows because of the poop) and then Antelope eats grass/lion. Lion eats antelope. And the circle continues.”
Thus human and nature can never be disjoined because, as some other scientists postulate, humans and nature are so intimately connected that acting as if we are separate and abusing nature is tantamount to abusing ourselves.
This unity and contact with the nature and curiosity to discover her magnificent secrets behind every creation, from the tiny leaves of grass to the countless galaxies in the infinite universe makes us first marvel and then get befuddled. Thus everything in nature is a marvel in itself and there are millions of things all around us.
But to keep wondering, we must not kill the child inside as we grow up and become older and older. The child must remain alive and be continuously nourished by unlimited amount of curiosity until we go into the grave. The truth is that all humans are born, like Alice in Wonderland, with an innate sense of wonder, a feeling of awe and bewilderment over the world around us. It means that we have the innocence and curiosity to be “wowed” and fascinated even by the smallest things like an atom or quarks, as Whitman also seems to tell, and to see their particular uniqueness. It is to wonder “why” and search for answers with a wide-open mind. It is to marvel over the ant lugging a heavy leaf to its hill and to ponder why the sky is blue as does the Alice who falls through a rabbit hole into the madcap world of Wonderland and then journeys into this topsy-turvy world that gets “curiouser and curiouser” as her fantastical adventures unfold.
However the problem is that we are often full or ourselves and thus remain mostly self absorbed. Nearly everyone believes that they are the “Center of Universe” or more simply they suffer from the “Spotlight Effect” which means being “over conscious” and remaining focused on their own selves, their actions, and their appearance.
And, unfortunately, this kind of mind-set stops us from observing things in nature around us (and even knowing the universe within), from wondering, and thus from questioning and ultimately looking at thing in new way and creating a new perspectives to change our lives in a meaningful way.
Thus in the section 31 of the poem “Song of Myself” included in his work Leaves of Grass, Whitman strives to reveal more and more wonders of nature forcing us to open our eyes and stop complaining and whining about the dull and meaningless life:
“I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars,
And the pismire is equally perfect, and a grain of sand, and the egg of the wren,
And the tree-toad is a chef-d’œuvre for the highest,
And the running blackberry would adorn the parlors of heaven,
And the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all machinery,
And the cow crunching with depress’d head surpasses any statue,
And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels.
I find I incorporate gneiss, coal, long-threaded moss, fruits, grains, esculent roots,
And am stucco’d with quadrupeds and birds all over
And have distanced what is behind me for good reasons,
But call any thing back again when I desire it.
In vain the speeding or shyness,
In vain the plutonic rocks send their old heat against my approach,
In vain the mastodon retreats beneath its own powder’d bones,
In vain objects stand leagues off and assume manifold shapes,
In vain the ocean settling in hollows and the great monsters lying low,
In vain the buzzard houses herself with the sky,
In vain the snake slides through the creepers and logs,
In vain the elk takes to the inner passes of the woods,
In vain the razor-bill’d auk sails far north to Labrador,
I follow quickly, I ascend to the nest in the fissure of the cliff.”
The above lines are simple statement of faith and hope, a belief in the miraculous nature of everything from a leaf of grass to a cow “crunching” the grass in a meadow and that these thing can never escape him. Thus, in addition to making the connection between visible and invisible, he also creates a list of distant things, to show how their distance is “in vain.”
It’s all “in vain” because, as the poet points out in the form of a pun, that teeming past is literally in our veins, or already within us, part of our very blood. We inhabit a form that is inscribed with the life of the world, a form that shapes us to experience the present until our body reforms into other forms that will then experience other presents. Thus universe within also keeps growing ad-infinitum like the material universe outside.
Rumi, the famous mystical poet from the East, corroborate Whitman’s ideas in these words:
I died as mineral and became a plant,
I died as plant and rose to animal,
I died as animal and I was human,
Why should I fear? When was I less by dying?
Yet once more I shall die human,
To soar with angels blessed above.
And when I sacrifice my angel soul
I shall become what no mind ever conceived.
As a human, I will die once more,
Reborn, I will with the angels soar.
And when I let my angel body go,
I shall be more than mortal mind can know.”
In short, like Rumi, Whitman realizes that his human body is not only the result of vast evolutionary changes through eons of time but is part of an ongoing, nonstop process of an endless proliferation of life in an infinite variety of forms.
Thus miracles continue to happen and yet we are bored. It is because we are bereft of any imagination.
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References:
i) https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45477/song-of-myself-1892-version
ii) https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/food-web/
iii) https://www.britannica.com/topic/Leaves-of-Grass-by-Whitman
iv) https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-the-spotlight-effect-3024470
v) https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/9601308-i-died-as-mineral-and-became-a-plant-i-died
