Lessons from Sue the T-Rex: Why We All Need Moments of Wonder

Last week, I went to Chicago’s Field Museum to visit Sue the Tyrannosaurus Rex.  Did you know it’s the most complete T-Rex skeleton ever found?  Or that one of the only artificial parts of the skeleton on display is the skull, because the real skull is studied so frequently?  Or that Sue was about thirty years old when he/she died?  Or that we still don’t know if Sue was a he or a she? 

I didn’t know any of this.  What I do know is that Sue reminded me that dinosaurs are awesome.  More importantly, Sue taught me that we shouldn’t lose track of the simple wonders. 

I am in my mid-thirties, happily married, terminally employed, and with a toddler to occupy my every waking moment.  That means my finite amount of time—the same 24 hours a day we all share—gets parceled out almost without thought.  From waking up to getting ready to sitting at work to working out to changing diapers to making dinner to chores to bed.  These are the routines of my week, and they take up the bulk of those 24 hours.

Where is the time to wonder?  Not idle curiosity, though that is an important part.  I mean the Oxford definition: “A feeling of surprise mingled with admiration, caused by something beautiful, unexpected, unfamiliar, or inexplicable.”  It’s that tangible feeling when a child encounters something new, with wide eyes and an exclamation of wordless noise because what word could possibly fit such an experience?

At some point, we lose the inclination to wonder.  We have seen too much, grown too jaded, or have other things on our minds.  We outsource it, crawling through algorithmically provided content hoping for a flash of something that we used to find all around us.  Or perhaps we find it vicariously through our children, watching their moments of wonder and feeling nostalgia for when that was us.

While we may lose the inclination, we never lose the ability to wonder.  If you still have a soul, you can find those moments.  All it takes is two things: stillness to stop the cacophony in your own mind so there’s room for wonder, and the humility to acknowledge there are things in this wide universe of ours far beyond what we know, and that is magical. 

That is why I am grateful to Sue.  Seeing that T-Rex brought me dozens of small wonders wrapped up in a single experience.  I marveled at how a single tooth was the size of my forearm.  I gaped at the broken ribs, imagining what titanic struggle Sue had that might have caused them.  I shivered at the thought of Sue hunting me, finding myself much lower on the food chain than I’d prefer.

In that exhibit—just for a moment—I was a kid again.  That’s a moment I want to have again, looking up at the world in wonder and smiling at the thought of what’s around the next corner.