InquiryWonder

I want to inquire more. I want to create spaces where I and others are invited to inquire more. I want to see the world inquire more. I want to create spaces safe for practicing inquiry freely and openly and widely. It’s a big part of, if not the main point of my work at A Moveable Feast.

Inquiry, however, as a word, doesn’t do it for me. Maybe it is its relation to the Spanish inquisition, or the fact that it can be weaponized in a performative or disingenuous way like when a lawyer badgers a witness, or a Socrates asks manipulative notthatcurious questions.

So, I’m left wanting. The kinds of spaces I want to cultivate are a little more mysterious than a naked sort of inquiry. They’re more human and humane. There’s a pinch of magic in them. Some of that human mystery that you can’t not feel when you look up at a massively star-filled sky on a clear clear night in the middle of nowhere.

What I’m left wanting is wonder. Wonder is the beginning of philosophy. Socrates said that. Plato’s Socrates. It was one of those charming tidbits that students at my undergrad would bring up often. I have a hunch that wonder doesn’t factor in to most days for most people. That’s a pity to me. It seems to me that there’s heaps to wonder about. From physics to people, from current events to the creative process.

I have another hunch that as we read, we’re mostly taking in. In some cases, we’re taking-in unquestioningly (read: unwonderingly, but that’s not a word of course). We’re just eating. There’s no digesting. Isn’t that interesting?

We’d never not digest our food. But we skip the digesting of our reading all. the. time. I, honestly… wonder why.

I would like every interaction with any part of A Moveable Feast to be an invitation to inquire and to wonder. And I believe that the best way to inquire and the best way to wonder is to do so out loud. To speak your questions. Questions, in this way, are the enzymes and bacteria that reside in our digestive system to help us digest and metabolize.

Sure, you can write down your questions. You can publish your answers to the questions you write down. But one perspective is just one perspective. Inquiring/wondering with another person who’s also read the same text is a much richer digestive experience. You can unfold the meaning in what you read.

What if we started engaging in wonder on purpose?

Learn out loud with someone at A Moveable Feast. Book a kick off session with this link.