Despite the wrongness of her scientific claims, Rachel Carson had a very positive impact on my life. She wrote a brief publication in 1965 titled “A Sense of Wonder.” It is so brief I will share most of it with you here:
“A child’s world is fresh and new and beautiful, full of wonder and excitement. It is our misfortune that for most of us that clear eyed vision, that true instinct for what is beautiful and awe-inspiring, is dimmed and even lost before we reach adulthood. If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children, I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life, as an unfailing antidote against the boredom and disenchantments of later years, the sterile preoccupation with things that are artificial, the alienation from the sources of strength.”
I read this in my twenties and have been able to use it ever since in regaining a refreshing view of life through the eyes of an eight-year-old.
— Jay Lehr, Ph.D.
