“Instrucciones para vivir la vida: presta atención, asómbrate, cuéntalo, y nunca pierdas tu capacidad de asombro”
El asombro comienza con el simple acto de prestar atención.
There is a kind of magic hidden in Mary Oliver's words that stops you mid-breath. "Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it. And never lose your wonder." It sounds almost too simple, doesn't it? Four gentle instructions for an entire life. But the more you sit with them, the more you realize they aren't simple at all — they are profound. They are a quiet revolution against the numbness that modern life so easily wraps around us.
Think about the last time you truly paid attention. Not the kind of attention where your eyes are open but your mind is somewhere else entirely — scrolling through tomorrow's worries or yesterday's regrets. Real attention. The kind where you notice the way morning light falls across your kitchen table, or how your friend's voice softens when they talk about something they love. That quality of presence is rarer than we think, and Oliver is asking us to practice it like a daily devotion.
BibiDuck likes to imagine this as a walk through a quiet park on an ordinary Tuesday. Nothing spectacular is happening — just pigeons, a puddle, the smell of damp earth after rain. But if you slow down enough to really look, you find yourself astonished. The way a single leaf catches the wind. The laugh of a child chasing a dog. Suddenly, the ordinary Tuesday becomes something worth telling someone about. That is exactly what Oliver means. Wonder isn't reserved for mountaintops and sunsets. It lives in the in-between moments, waiting to be noticed.
Telling about it matters too, more than we often give credit for. When you share what moves you — a beautiful cloud formation, a sentence from a book that made your heart ache, a stranger's small act of kindness — you do two things at once. You cement the experience in your own memory, and you invite someone else into a moment of beauty they might have missed. Storytelling, even in its smallest forms, is how wonder travels from one heart to another.
So here is a gentle nudge from one wondering soul to another: today, find one thing that genuinely surprises you. It doesn't have to be grand. A spider web jeweled with morning dew counts. The perfect timing of a song that plays right when you needed it counts. Let yourself be astonished, and then tell someone — a friend, a journal, even yourself in the mirror. Never let the world convince you that wonder is childish or impractical. It is, in fact, one of the most essential things you carry. Guard it tenderly.
