Response to Assignment 1 - Yixia Gu

The statement whether or not we lose our ability to wonder as we grow old is quite a thought provoking one. As Jostein Gaarder writes in "Sophie’s World", while we age, we seem to snuggle further into the fur of the white rabbit because it is a presumably 'safe haven', perhaps this is true-our cognition of the world around us, the people, the society, the universe is gradually shaped and refined as time goes by. Similarly, we need not worry or ponder about our existence (we are alive and well on earth) or other everyday matters such as why the T.V works, and how we are able to hear music etc. This also relates to my own experience as in the past few years I have realised that although it still ask questions, they have lost the genuine touch of curiosity which I recall to having when I was younger.

Yet, the more I think about it, the more I think that our ability to wonder has not been "lost", it just undergoes a series of stages. A child begins with the huge potential of thought and starts off with a myriad of "whys", because they do not have a predisposition of knowledge, therefore he/she is motivated to wonder in order to understand the unknown (which might even be of why theirs is a small group of mini people amongst millions or giants). Their 'ignorance' propels them forwards, fueled with excitement, and the result is an ecstatic exclamation. then as the child gradually builds up its treasury of answers and transitions into the teenage year, it seems as if the answers to all the 'life-threatening' questions such as "how were we born" "why do we get sick" "do people die”, are relatively clear, but only a minority of us attempt to get to the end of it. Nevertheless, as we mature and enter adulthood, sometimes the simple explanations are insufficient. This is because we dig more deeply into the worldly issues such as: why countries have wars, and why poverty occurs (a child might only think about them simplistically)

A lot of us may assume that the elderly simply don't wonder, or show signs of thought, or that they have lived through so much of their life already so that all they want to do is to live the remainder in indifferent bliss. But wouldn't their most important questions be: when their time is up? Most certainly it would be easier and more assuring now to hide in the hairs of the white rabbit. Yet, I think some 'old' people at this moment would have a resurging of a whole list of wonders which was regrettably faded, and now materialized.

Although their might be grown up people holding on to the "string-of-life" because they don't have the courage and energy to wonder about the world, I believe that as long as we are not "old" on the inside, there are still an infinity amount of 'wonderable' things which can pass through our brains-and that’s why the same old universal issues have been debated for eternity.