50 Things I Wonder

Controlled Hallucinations and the Photographs of Strangers

1. I wonder if how you feel about Mondays is just how you feel about life. 

2. I wonder if psithurism is the most beautiful word in the English language. It’s pronounced sith-yoor-ism. It means the sound of leaves rustling in the wind.

3. I wonder why the melody for the Alphabet Song is the same as the melody for Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. I wonder what happened there and if anyone ever got upset about it.

4. I wonder how much of parenting young children day by day depends on two things. One, having a plan. And two, accepting that your plan will rarely go exactly to plan.

5. I wonder how much of life is like that too. 

6. I wonder why anyone bothers saying ‘half a dozen’ when they could simply say ‘six’ and move on with their lives.

7. I wonder how much our personalities are set, and how much we’ll truly change. I wonder if the capacity for change is just another aspect of our personalities.

8. I wonder how much we should be at peace with our own nature and how much we should fight it. I wonder what the optimal ratio is of acceptance to striving.

9. I wonder if it’s easier to be content with a smaller sense of self.

10. I wonder how much happiness can be attained by giving up on our idea of what happiness should be.

11. I wonder how important it is to hope, and the healthiest way to do so. I wonder if it’s possible to be happy with the life we have while aspiring to a better one at the same time (or if each gnaws away at the other).

12. I wonder how often I appear in the background of the photographs of strangers. I wonder what those photographs look like and where I was going on the day they were taken.

13. I wonder what the world actually looks like. If – as neuroscientist Anil Seth says – consciousness is a ‘controlled hallucination,’ if our brains exist in the darkness and silence of our own skulls, and if everything we experience is just the brain’s best guess at what’s out there in the world, then what really is out there in the world, and how does it differ from our experience of it?

14. I wonder to what extent disappointment and discouragement, anger and sorrow are just a product of our own expectations. I wonder if the higher our expectations, the greater our capacity for sadness.

15. I wonder how much of our lives are governed by the expectations of others. And I wonder how much they should be.

16. I wonder if hard work makes life harder, or if hard work makes life easier.

17. I wonder if the best way to preserve your potential is by never really trying, if the best way to believe in your own talent is by never fully testing it.

18. I wonder how much of what we call talent is actually just a form of education. I wonder how much of it is learning, training, technique.

19. I wonder how much we use the word ‘talent’ as a way of dismissing another person’s hard work and passion, or of justifying our own shortcomings. The painting is good, we tell ourselves, not because of the hours invested in learning the craft, or the sacrifices made along the way, or the effort and consideration that went into its creation, but rather because the artist is talented.

20. I wonder if the act of working hard at something can actually generate talent. (And I wonder if there’s any harm in believing that, even if it isn’t true.)

21. I wonder if there are better words for talent. Perhaps people have particular abilities not because they are talented, but rather because they are industrious, curious, patient, or have vim and vigour and verve.

22. I wonder why you can’t hold your nose and hum at the same time. We don’t hum through our noses, surely?

23. I wonder if the ideas associated with a particular wine are more important than its actual taste. I wonder if the most important thing about a bottle of wine is the story of its grape.

24. I wonder how much of parenting young children day by day is a question of deciding for yourself what matters and what doesn’t. A fistful of yogurt on your freshly laundered shirt. Rolls of toilet paper hurled into a bath full of water. Shit on your nose (don’t ask). It matters if you think it does – and doesn’t if you don’t.

25. I wonder how much of life is like that too.

26. I wonder how much time we spend living in quiet opposition to the world around us. A nearby fly. Someone in our way. The ‘wrong’ weather. Buffering.

27. I wonder how much energy we spend on the silent judgement of others.

28. I wonder how we can be so certain in our judgement of another person’s life, and so full of doubt in our own.

29. I wonder how much success is determined solely by a person’s tolerance for staying with a problem.

30. I wonder how much of creativity is patience.

31. I wonder how much of creativity is generating options. 

32. I wonder if it’s possible to hold two beliefs about our creative work simultaneously: on one hand, this is awful, on the other, I can make it great – to be our own harshest critic and our own biggest fan, and to understand which role is needed at any given moment.

33. I wonder if persistence is always wise. I wonder if some ideas should simply be abandoned. I wonder how to spot them.

34. I wonder what the correct balance is between trusting in your gut reaction and questioning your instincts. Too much of one, and the quality may suffer. Too much of the other, and you’ll never even finish.

35. I wonder if the times my opinion warrants the greatest scrutiny are the times when it forms the fastest.

36. I wonder whether the opposite of procrastination is not motivation, or will-power, or action. But rather it is routine, it is schedule.

37. I wonder if there’s increased value in slowing down the more the world accelerates.

38. I wonder the total number of times someone will say my name aloud, even after I die. There must be a number – what is it? I wonder about this number, and the finite pool my friends and family are drawing from every time they refer to me.

39. I wonder if any character in the history of film and television has ever successfully cleaned up broken glass without cutting a finger.

40. I wonder if one of the reasons some of us struggle with writing is because that one word – ‘writing’ – conveys too many different actions: dreaming, reasoning, drafting, plotting, editing, cutting. I wonder if we would have a better relationship with writing if we had clearer terms for each part of the process, if we were better at recognising which part of the process we were in, and if we could learn to be at peace with it. Creating is finding the right words; editing is finding the wrong ones. And you cannot write without doing both.

41. I wonder if, despite my distaste for them, a semicolon might occasionally be justified. (See the penultimate sentence above in Wondering No. 40. And yes, I know there’s a comma splice in No. 36, and no, I do not care.)

42. I wonder what it is about the early morning that makes passing strangers more likely to greet each other.

43. I wonder if not all problems can be solved by thinking. I wonder if there are times we’re better off acting first and thinking later, and I wonder what those times might be.

44. I wonder if there’s an optimal ratio of thought to action.

45. I wonder how much of our time is spent in the battle between where we would like to direct our attention, and where others would like us to direct it.

46. I wonder why the foods I want to eat secretly in the kitchen are the same foods that have the loudest packaging.

47. I wonder if you can only truly learn your flaws from those who know you well.

48. I wonder if winning the argument is the same thing as being right.

49. I wonder how often we get upset with others when the problem is actually us.

50. I wonder if ‘etc.’ means anything other than, ‘I’ve now run out of examples.’

I stole this post format from Cate Hall, who stole it from Sasha Chapin, who stole it from Mari Andrew. While they all know things, I’ve found myself more comfortable wondering them. This has changed the tone of the format somewhat, but I don’t mind if you don’t.

I have no doubt these wonderings are a soup of ideas absorbed from others over the years. Maybe I’ll expand on some of them in a post of their own one day.