Holding onto Wonder

How do we hold onto wonder? I am faced with this question all the time.

It's not always a problem for me. For instance, there are parts of life that never cease to fill me with wonder. Indeed, my sense of wonder regarding them is ever-deepening. For instance: words and phrases (and language in general), traditions and customs, memory, time and space...basically, primary and primordial things. 

And then there's books. Books fill me with a sense of wonder.

And yet...there are other things which I think should fill me with wonder but don't.

For instance: escalators. I was fascinated with escalators as a kid and always wanted to go on them. Now I take them daily without any sense of joy or excitement. I try to cultivate it, but it's difficult.

The same should apply to technology in general. Why do we get so blasé about switching on a lightbulb or riding on a bus? These things are marvels. I certainly couldn't make them myself.

And let's not forget our own bodies. Every second my body has to do innumerable things that I don't even begin to understand, just to keep me alive. And somehow I forget this.

Another blasé attitude I find myself fighting against is my attitude to places. Places become invisible to me. I want to be able to walk down a street I've walked down a thousand times with the same sense of discovery I felt the first time I walked down it.

Apparently this exhortation is hung in many a Catholic sacristy: "Oh priest, celebrate this Mass as if it were first Mass, your last Mass, your only Mass." I would like to carry the same spirit through my entire day. But it's tough!