How did you cultivate a sense of wonder in your life this year?
(Author: Jeffrey Davis)
Thinking about this question, I realize that wondering is an essential part of my life, in many different ways.
I wonder about research questions.
Thinking out of the box and wondering why we make certain assumptions are supposed to be my daily activities. Supposed to be, that is.
Too often, I just rush around the day in a reactive mode: helping out colleagues, replying e-mail, planning my experiments. My day gets stuffed with short activities, while I need large batches of time to actually do the real scientific work and think deeply.
One of my challenges for the next year will be to create this room for creativity in my schedule. I might start to set office hours, and try to put my meetings less scattered around in time.
I wonder about the opportunities I get.
It is amazing to discover what happens if you open doors. I am very fortunate in my project to decide what I want to try out and where I would like to go.
One of these doors I opened, was to go to a conference. It was my very first conference ever and I went all by myself. Before that, I was dead nervous. I was afraid my work would be criticized. I was afraid no one would talk to me.
But I am so glad I went there. i learned so much and met so many people. Senior researchers would come up to me and start a conversation. I was not feeling alone or not part of the community, I was feeling very welcome indeed.
I am glad that I took the challenge.
I wonder about our beautiful world.
I try to enjoy all seasons and all changes in nature as much as possible. I enjoy walking outside and admiring a beautiful scenery and wondering about our wonderful world.
I used to live for summer, and ignore all other seasons. During the winter, I would feel very tired and without energy. I thought there was no solution at all to it.
Recently I discovered that the solution lies within accepting the beauty of every season. This is the first winter in which I feel as vivid and happy as during summertime. I just gave up on complaining, and decided to indulge in the beauty of the season. It was that easy to cure my winter disease.