Exciting wonder

JOHN QUINCY ADAMS, as a young man, was seated at dinner with a group of prominent folks, including Thomas Jefferson. He listened in amazement as Jefferson told how once, while he was living in Paris, the temperature remained below zero for six consecutive weeks. Adams knew darned good and well that no such thing had occurred, because he had himself been in Paris at the same time as Jefferson. His memory was that the weather had indeed been a bit nippy, but endurable. Never let the truth interfere with a good story, Mark Twain might have said. Adams was a tolerant and understanding man, a keen judge of character, and he didn't hold Jefferson's lie against him. He understand that dreamy Thomas was merely a man who loved to, in Adam's words, "excite wonder". Himself filled with a sense of the miracle of life , Jefferson simply wanted to share his passion for living with others. That's hard to do nowadays; that is, to excite wonder. I do a lot of reading, and I can't swing a dead cat without coming across some fact or set of facts which I had never before known, which excites wonder within me. So I close my book and look around for somebody with whom to share my excitement. Problem is, it never works. I never find anyone with whom to share my excitement. I never seem to excite any wonder. Invariably, the target of my wonder lust ignore what I said, or seems to, and proceeds to change the topic of conversation to himself. or tries to outdo me with some bit of information, usually about herself. Often, the target will simply nod and shrug, as if to say: "so what", or, "hell, I already knew that". every time, I know damned good and well that target did not in fact already know my wondrous fact, and was disguising wondrous excitement, or not listening. People seem immune to the wondrous. Its a disappointing feeling. No one seems to want to be intellectually excited by an outside source. No one seems willing to admit that somebody knows something that they themselves didn't already know. We Americans seem too proud to admit that there are things we didn't already know, as if such an admission would reveal some weakness. And its a shame, because few things in life are more fulfilling than the excitement of wonder.