" There is another world,” Paul Éluard wrote, “but it is in this one.”* One world is marked by a bland forgetfulness, where we do not permit ourselves an openness to the simple, graced beauty that is always with us. The other is marked by attentiveness, aliveness, love. This is the state of wonder, which is commonly treated as a passive phenomenon—a kind of visitation or feeling that overcomes us in the face of something wondrous. But the ground of the word, the Old English wundrian, is very active, meaning “to be affected by one’s own astonishment.” We decide, moment to moment, if we will allow ourselves to be affected by the presence of this brighter world in our everyday lives. Certainly "

― Lyanda Lynn Haupt , Mozart's Starling