The Wonder Paradox: Enhancing the Mind Through Mystery

In her latest book, The Wonder Paradox: Embracing the Weirdness of Existence, teacher, poet, and historian Jennifer Michael Hecht argues that wonder is our core human experience, accessible through a number of ready doorways, particularly ritual and poetry. Hecht, whose previous books include the bestseller Doubt: A History, Stay (a study of suicide), The End of the Soul, and The Next Ancient World, holds a Ph.D. in the history of science and European cultural history from Columbia University and has taught in the MFA program at Columbia University and the New School in New York City. Her work has been featured on many radio programs, including On Being with Krista Tippet, The Leonard Lopate Show, Speaking of Faith, Talk of the Nation, and Brian Lehrer. We recently talked about why awe matters, how poetry prompts a “nondual” experience, and the wondrous strangeness of being human.

Mark Matousek: Your new book opens with an arresting statement: “The consciousness paradox is the startling fact that soft matter afloat in a bone bowl made Mozart’s sonatas, Shakespeare’s plays, and the whole astounding modern world.” Can you say more?

Jennifer Michael Hecht: I always like to say that consciousness is stranger than the virgin birth. You don’t need the supernatural to experience wonder. Religion was invented as a way of “matching” the weirdness of life and death and galaxies and consciousness. The idea that “meat thinks,” that we live in one tiny scale of time and space yet feel so very important, is the greatest paradox of all.

We have evolved as material beings so full of wonder that we can look up at the sky and be tremendously moved. It’s the reason that experiencing science in our human world isn’t enough. We need poetry, too. Poetry takes in everything. Its business is paradox.

MM: You write that poetry opens us to the space between polarities. How does that happen?

JMH: Our lives are guided toward concentrating on and normalizing a desire treadmill. But is this life? If we only have a science box and a religion box, where does love go? Poetry helps people remember how strange our situation is. Everything we do for our inner lives to make life feel beautiful and strong contributes to living a poetic life.

A lot of human needs have been taken care of by religion. This is why religious holidays mean something. One holiday is about shame, and another is about renewal. A lot of us have our own traditions and ceremonies but need the awareness of the community to remember that there’s something real that binds us. My suggestion is that you pick a poem for the holidays you celebrate. In a poem, you want to move someone or communicate in some way, and so they tend to be like intimate whispers in your ear. They feel a little like prayers.

MM: So poetry makes up for the loss of the supernatural, in your view?

JMH: Yes. But I am not the first person to make that observation. There’s something in all the arts that lean towards the ineffable, the sublime. When they reach it, we call it poetic because we think of a poem as this tiny balanced thing that holds together on its own. Poets with Catholic backgrounds tend to give us gorgeous versions of that struggle towards making sense of what is true. Neruda’s poetry is ornate and rich with the color of blood, the feel of velvet, and candlelights.

MM: You seem to be suggesting that binary thinking conspires against paradox and diminishes our lives.

JMH: That’s correct. A paradox can be frightening and harder work for the brain. And yet, getting friendly with it takes the pain away because it’s interesting and it matters. Death is an interesting dichotomy, for example. The Victorians were scared of sex but had a death memorial culture. We’re fine with sex and terrified of death. Funeral parlors used to be in the parlor of your house, but now, we’ve lost deathbed scenes we could look forward to where we could shock people with all our secrets. So being scared of death is a great paradox. Yet when we shift our perspective about it, we are liberated from a lot of petty things.

Life teaches us humility through all our paths, and nobody escapes it. If you haven’t been thinking about your death, it can be painful when it arrives. Being aware of the end need not diminish your current life.

MM: There’s resistance to the idea that apparent opposites can be true at the same time. Our black-or-white culture leaves so little room for subtlety, nuance, and transformation. Mystery and ambiguity terrify us.

JMH: Holding two opposing truths in your mind without a nervous rushing to solve it is hard to do. Poets do it by putting down two thoughts that somehow reverberate with each other and creating meaning between them. Write down two things that don’t fit but call to each other. Trust those impulses because, as I tell my writing students, once you scare yourself, you have something. The question is, how do you survive a conversation where there is no attempt to get to a singular answer? Poetry does this by its very nature. We expect poems to make sense—but in a complex way.

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MM: Or to stop making sense.

JMH: Absolutely, because how do you get to a new idea? It’s like everything we think about tells us that we can only draw on what we already know. Yet we’ve come up with all this novelty by allowing ourselves an impulse and then staying with it, the way inventors do. It’s about learning to look for certain kinds of feelings. Poets are doing that with words, but it can take a long time to figure out.

The first time I read a poem, I often have no idea why I like it or what it means. Then I read it again and again. After a while, it reads like it’s conversational, but I have to get there.

MM: How is paradox related to ritual?

JMH: Ritual gets us to notice paradox, and poetry gets us to that noticing place by keeping us in the moment. Ritual then extends that moment, sometimes by boring you a little. You need to be away from input, and when you’re bored, other parts of your brain start mixing the things you already know and giving them back to you in different ways.

Ritual also helps by making us aware of where we are during certain times of the year. This helps us translate our feelings, helps us become married people, and helps us realize we have a child. Traditional holidays have a tremendous amount of ritual variation and meaning, while newer ones have very little. In the holiday section of my book, there’s a list with the term “Cabinet of Culture” for each holiday. Some holidays overflow with culture, and some are empty. If we want a richer relationship with a holiday, we can purposefully associate it with foods, colors, plants, sounds, or other specifics.

MM: Is religion important to ritual?

JMH: Meaning is important to ritual. I was raised Jewish but studied religions long enough to get my heart out of it, yet the rituals remain interesting to me. For instance, getting rid of shame is not a supernatural removal of shame; it’s spending time thinking about what you did and processing it.

Religion continues to take care of things like death, not only at the funeral but also with parties like the Day of the Dead, where we are reminded of death, but we’re not supposed to be mourning anyone in particular. However, it’s also a chance for us to just think about our own death. Paint your face like a skeleton, look in the mirror, and feel the weirdness.

MM: One last question. Why does awe matter to our well-being?

JMH: Awe is part of transcendence, the name we’ve given to strange experiences. Most of us have only a few of these experiences in our whole lives, yet they deeply affect us. The absence of awe leads to depression and a general decline in health.

Awe can be generated through meditation or great art. At the other extreme, something like dance throws our body into it. I think music can get us to transcendence faster than poetry, but we need poetry to be able to talk about it. When we experience awe, we feel happy and one with everything. Afterward, people often say they felt like another type of being. They come back wanting more, but even though it’s not something you can pull a lever for, poetry sets up all the conditions for a transcendent experience.

MM: So a life without wonder is hardly worth living?

JMH: To me, it is unimaginable.