'Never lose your sense of wonder'

My senior high school English teacher once told me, "Never lose your sense of wonder."\nAlthough in these ensuing college years the phrase has never left me, I have slowly found myself inadvertently challenging it.\nI remember seeing "Jurassic Park" and being mesmerized. I remember watching Michael Jordan defy logic and soar. I remember hanging out in arcades and being blown away at the sheer sight of new video games.\nI wondered.\nI've now seen "The Matrix." I've watched Kobe Bryant. I've got a Playstation 2.\nIt's hard to wonder anymore.\nIn our pursuit of higher education, it's difficult not to get jaded. We've been let in on all the secrets. We've been taught about how the world works and how it's manipulative and deceptive, how the media is slaying our minds and individuality. We read between the lines, looking for meaning and purpose. We're trained to think critically of environment and in the process we've become lost.\nBut is it too much?\nHave we lost touch with the "Wow Factor"?\nOur desire to analyze has overtaken our ability to look at the world with a sense of awe and to occasionally let our most primitive emotions take over. We all want to rediscover fire, rather than just dance around its glow.\nBefore the revolution of computer animation, blue screens and "bullet-time," we were floored at the sight of spaceships blowing up space stations. Before allegations of illicit gifts and illicit sexual encounters, basketball players were heroes. Before everyone had the ability to sound off about a new record on a message board, we were allowed to form our own opinions when we had it in our hands. We were always ready to be amazed, for the "Wow Factor" was in constant motion, consistently exceeding all expectations and making us gaze at the world with a sense of wonder.\nA simple puppet dispensing prophetic knowledge and lifting rocks with his mind blew some minds in 1983, but his polished computer-animated look just doesn't cut it now. It takes a lot more to blow away a 22-year-old philosophy student. \nWell I don't want to be jaded anymore. I want to wonder.\nI want to lose myself in "Bad Boys 2" because seeing cars flip over the Miami highway is damn awesome. I want to spend 60 dollars on a ticket to see the WWE because The Rock is the coolest character on television since the Fonz. I want to watch Sammy Sosa sock a few dingers and not think about the corked bat. I want to listen to a new band without hearing the hype, the reviews or the obscurity.\nBut maybe it's too late to shut out the critical world and stare. \nMaybe it's not part of who we are anymore.\nIn San Leandro, California, an art teacher played a series of musical selections for a class of fifth graders and asked them to draw pictures to demonstrate what the songs made them feel (Sept. 17 EastbayExpress).\nWhat did she play for them? A career-spanning canon of Radiohead songs.\nSome kids giggled. Some looked bored and put their heads down. Some demanded to hear Sean Paul instead. Their pictures ranged from the Grim Reaper advertising "free suicides," to a man and a piano singing in front a huge crowd.\nThey didn't know that Radiohead has been the biggest critical darling of the last ten years. Their opinion wasn't swayed by a review in "Rolling Stone." They didn't try to prove to the hip crowd that they were a part of the counterculture. And they sure as hell didn't argue about the alternating time signatures on "Pyramid Song."\nThey just listened.