Wonder?

"Everyone in the world should get a standing ovation at least once in their life because we all overcometh the world" -Wonder by RJ Palacio 

Wonder chronicles the fictional life of several characters within their relationships to Auggie, a boy who was born with "a lottery of a face"-a rare combination of birth defects making his face the focus of his first days of middle school. Throughout the novel, we see Auggie evolve from a shy boy who kept his head lowered and hated being the focus of jokes and pointing to a young man growing in confidence and an identity outside of his defects. 

Auggie is a young boy that often caught the amazement of on-lookers because of his face, though nothing else about him (other than his over-the-top obsession with Star Wars) separated him from the average fifth grade boy. In the end of the book (SPOILER ALERT...though not imperative to the novel)  Auggie is presented with an award for exemplar courage throughout the school year-yet he doesn't completely understand saying that he simply received this award for being himself-there was nothing courageous he actually underwent other than facing all of the normal challenges with an unusual set of features. 

It is a beautiful, quick read that I would encourage anyone to pick up. However, I don't want to talk about the details of the plot, rather where I think the title, itself, may come from seeing how WONDER is never actually mentioned in the entire novel.  

Palacio writes Auggie's story through several characters' interactions with Auggie: his sister, her boyfriend, his best friend, his best girl friend, etc. Though subtly, we are all shown that each of these characters is facing their own obstacle: poverty, identity, learning disability, being known, etc.  Yet, we are never slapped in the face with the fate that they are forced to overcome-none of them have chosen their battle....Via didn't choose to have a brother with defects, John Will didn't choose to be poor, Justin didn't choose to have a learning disability. Yet each of these characters survives their fate all the while putting Auggie's fate as the most undesirable and thus, Auggie the most courageous. 

We are no different than those fictional characters: We have each been dealt at least one bad card in our hand that we didn't choose. We can try to avoid the consequences, but eventually we have to face them. We were never shown Auggie complaining about his parents having the one-in-a-million genetic make-up that made him the way he is, we didn't see him refusing to wake up in the morning until someone could give him a new face. (besides, he had already undergone many plastic surgeries) He never said that his challenges were tougher than any of the other characters': Auggie simply lived the life that he had to with the best possible attitude. 

We, as a society, as broken people, are often creating hierarchies of pain and suffering. If our lives don't intersect with the top of the scale, we don't deserve to complain, or we don't deserve to be recognized for making it through another day. I can't help but think of a quote that has stuck with me since English 11 when watching an interview with Elie Wiesel, author of Night and a holocaust survivor. When asked if there are holocaust-level tragedies still present in the world, Ellie gives the follow response:

I don't like to compare one atrocity to another. That would be demeaning to both... It's an insult. Every tragedy is unique, just as every human is unique. When a person loses someone dear to her, who am I to say that my tragedy was greater? I have no right. For that person, her tragedy is the greatest in the world—and she is right in thinking so.

Those lines have often clicked into memory in conversation about pain, about the unfair cards that we are dealt, the unfair cards that we, too often, are fearful to make a deal of.  I think the wonder of it all is that we wake-up each day and face whatever challenges are thrown our way. Some people rely on faith, others fortune or karma or whatever else gets them through...but each of us continues onto the next day. Auggie received recognition for being courageous simply for living his life and his response was how good the standing ovation felt-that each and every one of us deserves to feel that level of accomplishment at least once in our lives. We deserve to have people recognize how hard it was to wake up every morning, to go to work under appreciated, to live in a family that views you as invisible, to fight a deadly disease, to battle bullies, to live through abuse, to refuse to count the calories just once...to do whatever it is that you do each and every day without a choice...simply because that is what you have to do. You deserve to not have to measure that pain, or put yourself at the bottom of the scale because "someone else has it worse off". 

I'm not saying we need to sit around throwing giant pity-parties for everyone...in fact, I'm saying the exact opposite. It is a wonder for each of us to make it through each day, but it is more wonderful to recognize that every other person that we interact with throughout our days also deserves that standing ovation and to do as much as we can to help give it to them. The beauty of Auggie's year and growth was not that he simply made it through the fifth grade, but that others began to realize that he was more than the face that he was given. They began to look at him not with an immense amount of wonder, but with a sense of normality. 

So I guess this left me with two semi-conflicting messages:

1.) We each deserve a standing ovation for making it through another day of the hand we were dealt because we were each given a couple of bad cards.

2.) Beauty is found when we stop focusing on those bad cards and, instead, realize that we are normal...because everyone else is holding a few of those cards too..and use that knowledge to reach out to someone else because if we combine all of the "bad cards," someone is going to end up with a pretty good hand.

3.) We, as humans, deeply desire to be noticed...to be known...but to be noticed for more than our "bad cards". 

So there are my, as always, jumbled thoughts. I have to admit that I like the way my mind thinks, but there is often a disconnect between my thoughts and my words, hope you understood something out of this mess.

You made it through another day. Congratulations, because I know it wasn't easy. 

<3 D