Another true story is that of Edgar Allan Poe, author of some of the most extraordinary tales in the literary canon – still cherished nearly two hundred years after they were written. Poe did not become successful and wealthy. Quite the contrary: he died a wretched death in the street at the age of just forty, impoverished and broken by alcohol. This is the kind of story we do not tell often enough.
We have an unfortunate relationship with defeat. We try to erase it as a fact of life; inspirational quotes tell us there is always something to learn from a failed venture, that every curse is a blessing in disguise, that obstacles show the way. This is disingenuous. While refusing defeat seems to add to our grit, it actually detracts from it. To bounce back from a setback, it is fundamentally important that we admit that it was, indeed, a setback.
It sometimes happens that an obstacle is a giant bloody obstacle and nothing less than that. A healthy person who has never smoked a cigarette in their life gets lung cancer at twenty-seven; you are by far the best candidate for your dream job and you still don’t get it, and it is not a blessing in disguise, because the next job you find is pretty bad, and it takes you three years to get out of it. Such things happen. There is nothing to learn there, except that luck matters.
The ancient Romans held the goddess Fortuna, Luck, in high regard; she could make or break the plans of mortals and gods alike. When Fortuna is raging against you, as is bound to happen at some point, then you need your sense of wonder more than ever. A sense of wonder comes from a full engagement with life in all its aspects, darkness as much as light, fear as much as joy. Knowing that the mystery of reality is indeed tremendum et fascinans will help us not to despair when we are seeing its more frightening face. It will help us to look at defeat square on, and hang on, until the wheel of luck turns, and the storm dies down; or until we reach our life’s end at last, and we have nothing to worry about any more.
*
The third portal opens a thousand more. It is Communication.
We give this word an almost predatory connotation. Effective communicators should be able to convince the other side to do their bidding; they outsmart their opponent in a competition in which one person’s victory is the other’s defeat. But the word ‘communication’ comes from the Latin communicare, ‘to share’: communication is an exchange of gifts. Both sides are trying to create a new reality together, and effective communication is about finding a solution that will leave both of them happy.
Wonder is connected to a capacity to live in ambiguity: a life of wonder will leave you with very few certainties. It will make you able to understand that other people’s reality is not yours, and even when you think they are wrong, or ill-intentioned, you will still be able to see why they have acted as they have. You will see them as Thou rather than It. A wonder-based approach to communication sees it as an encounter rather than a contest.
I have been working with communication for my entire professional life and the misconception I have encountered most frequently is the belief that good communication is a matter of self-expression. If you focus on what you need to say and you articulate it clearly, so the misconception goes, you will be an effective communicator. That is not the case.
Real communication requires you to focus on the other side; not on what you need, but on what they need. Your words are a rope you give them so that you both can climb together, rather than one they should use to hang themselves.
Deepak Malhotra, Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, says that empathy leads to successful negotiation, and all the more so when the negotiations are tough. When the other side’s interests go against ours and there seems to be no chance of compromise, Malhotra argues, what we must do is put ourselves in their shoes, and ask ourselves: ‘How does the other side see their own behaviour?’7
That might be easier said than done in the heat of a negotiation, be it with armed criminals holding hostages or with your partner who wants to go to Mallorca while you favour Venice. We are like the Sultan Shahryar: we think we have it all figured out, and if the other side does not agree, we must, alas, chop off their head. Like Shahryar, we might even have the power to do that. The sultan, though, was not happy.
Those who cultivate an enchanted world view are open to other realities. By habitually seeking wonder, they have enlarged their space of possibility so often that it won’t hurt them to do so one more time. By having learned that our reality is small, we will forgive others the smallness of theirs, and we might just have a chance to change both. Wonder fosters empathy – and we are going to need a lot of it in the coming years.
*
We are the species that invented jewels and fireworks. With jewels, we make wonder eternaclass="underline" we lovingly sculpt rocks and bend metals to create objects that exist only to be forever wonderful. With fireworks, we make wonder transient: we lovingly sculpt fire, one of the elemental forces of nature, to create art that is beautiful for a fleeting moment only. We long for transience and eternity; we are made of both.
Human life is filled with paradoxes. We can only see (and smell, and lick, and touch, and hear) a small part of the universe but we want to know it all, we say that we will love someone for ever even though we know we are going to die, we cleave to certainties that hold only as long as we refuse to see the exceptions. A life of wonder is one in which we embrace these paradoxes. It is a messy life, a life that accepts ambiguity and celebrates mystery; a life that runs counter to the narrative that would leave us disenchanted, satisfied with our lot – and obedient.
There is no denying that the world is darkening. We seem to be forgetting what it was like to live in a society in which dictators were condemned without ifs and buts. The day I wrote these words, a major national paper carried an opinion piece arguing that democratic leaders had one or two things to learn from autocrats; or, to quote the article, from ‘strongmen’.
I believe we have one or two things to learn from those who resist strongmen.
This is what we have been doing: we have armed ourselves to fight against the definition of reality that others want to impose upon us – a bland, grey caricature of our dazzling universe.
Wonder is the fuel we need in order to be Blake’s tiger burning bright. Every disenchanted day we live is a day we surrender to those who want us divided and lonely. A life of wonder is a radical life, for wonder is not childish, little, or cute.
Wonder bites, and so do we.
We hope you enjoyed this book.
Acknowledgements
Notes
Bibliography
About Francesco Dimitri
Also by Francesco Dimitri
About Anima
Acknowledgements
A mentor named Piers Blofeld set me on the journey: on a windy winter afternoon we sought refuge in a tiny tavern, and there he listened to my vision. He wisely counselled me on how to prepare, and found me a place where to start.
A champion named Richard Milbank was with me at every twist and turn, accepting patiently all the detours and the assorted strangeness that comes your way when you travel with someone who aims at making the world weirder.
A companion named Paola Filotico shaped the vision with me, and when I got lost she got lost with me, and when I found my way back it was because of her.