Familiar

I read something this morning attributed to G.K.Chesterton that I really like. “…look at things familiar until they become unfamiliar again.”  The point of what he seemed to be saying and what I was reading is it is too easy to reach a point where we lose our sense of wonder.
I know watching wildlife documentaries on tv there are many wow moments.  Yet the more there are, the more familiar I become with them, and it can take even greater wow things to make me go wow.
This seems to be the case from the extraordinary to the ordinary.  The more I have it or do it, the more familiar I become with it and the more it takes for me to see the unfamiliar.
I did enjoy my job because it was regularly changing.  Although I had the one title for many years, it seems that just when the job was becoming familiar, unfamiliar things were added which kept me interested.
It reminds me of someone who claims to have had 20 years’ experience.  The question is, was it 20 years of one year or 20 years of changing things.  It seems to me that is one of the reasons why there is so much moving on.  When something becomes familiar there is a craving for the unfamiliar.  A desire to move on.  New challenges.
To me that is a new and better way of looking at things in one way.  Once upon a time people were employees of one company for life.  That is ok where there is change.  Where there is not, it becomes same ol same ol and it is hard to stay motivated or to motivate that. 
The key for me when facing the routine is to look at the familiar until it becomes unfamiliar again.  I regularly do tasks.  Familiar tasks.  Everyday tasks.  Yet I do them not only with a sense of having to do them, but with a sense that perhaps there is a new discovery to be made.  Often there is not.  Sometimes there is.  But for sure I will miss it if I am not looking for it.
I may be gardening or washing up or preparing for a gathering.  All stuff I have done enough to think I am the man for the job.  Been there done that.  Yet there are times I call light bulb moments.  I see or think something I have never thought before that is genuinely lifechanging.  That warrants further investigation.  The more I look into it, the more my sense of wonder.
I was best man at a guy’s wedding who went on to become a minister in a traditional denomination.  It is their habit to move people around after so many years.  For a time, they could be in Babinda.  Then they get moved to Moree and then to Perth.
I will never forget his answer to a question I asked him.  “What do you do when all the people are totally unresponsive?”  He said, “I preach to myself.”
I really like that.  Sometimes what I do is familiar.  When I look at it with a sense of wonder the familiar can become unfamiliar and induce a sense of wonder.