To Wonder Again

"My cat has dandruff"

"Obama wearing jeans" 

"Why are movies shot out of sequence?"

"How to quickly thaw sausage"

"Obama wearing shorts"

"GPA calculator"

"What is Athena the goddess of?"
"Discreet cat litter ad"

"How to start a fire in a wood stove"

"What's the point of balancing equations?"

     Guess what those are? Those are things I've searched on my iPhone in the past few days, and really they're only a sampling. Now which of those google searches were necessary to my life? Literally none of them. It used to be that when I was curious about the world, I would ask my Mom. If she didn't know, I'd ask my Dad or my Grandma or my Pop or my brother. If no one knew the answer to a question I was asking, I'd read a book, look for answers within books. If all else failed, I would just keep on wondering. I'd create my own theories and hypotheses about things. Now with the internet literally at finger tips all day every day, I feel like I don't let myself wonder about anything anymore. If I want to know something, I just look it up. It sounds convenient, and it sounds like it would make my life easier, and I guess it does. But there's a huge difference between something making your life easier, and making it better. And I don't know that instant access to the internet has made my life any better. It's depleted some of my curiosity. It's made me trust and value the authority and intelligence of website makers and online authors over the authority and intelligence of the smart and caring people who are all around me. I don't want to ramble on about this for too long, but I do want to say this: I think I want to start wondering again. I want to be stumped about something again. Instead of asking google why movies are shot out of sequence, I want to use my own logic to come up with an answer. (By the way, it's mostly because of money issues and location.) I'm tired of filling up my "wonder time" and "daydream time" with facts. That probably sounds totally out of wack, but I want to have to think about things again. I want to to wonder again. I miss not knowing things. 

-VaughnDL