I Wonder

It was a winter night and I was eight years old.

My parents were out. My eight siblings were in bed. I was alone in the family room — a double car garage my dad had converted into a family room that was supposed to feel cosy but never quite did. To my eight-year-old eyes it was huge. Dark brown and white checked tiles on the floor. A chartreuse green sectional couch covered in bouclé fabric I hated the feel of. Big old ashtray stands standing around like sentinels. The TV was off. The room was dimly lit, and there was a chill in the air.

It felt a little depressing, if I’m honest. But I didn’t mind being alone. I was used to it.

On the floor in front of me was my younger brother’s train set.

Now you have to understand something about me. I have always loved miniature things. Dollhouses with their tiny tables and chairs, little vanities and beds, miniature people going about their miniature lives. There was something about a small replica of a real thing that made my imagination light up. I didn’t just look at those little worlds. I pretended to live inside them.

The train set was no different.

My brother — a year and a half younger than me — had assembled it with the kind of care only a child who truly loves something can manage. Plastic mountains with tunnels running through them. Tumbleweeds and cactus scattered across rocky terrain. Cowboys on little horses. A water hole here. A station there. When that train made its rounds, engine in front and caboose in back, I wasn’t sitting on the checked tiles in a chilly family room in the middle of winter. I was standing in a western town, watching a train pull in from the desert.

The only problem was — it was off limits. That train set belonged to my brother and no one else was allowed to touch it.

So I just sat there. Staring at it.

And then something happened that I have never fully been able to explain. Out of the blue — from absolutely nowhere — a funny thought arrived in my mind. It just came to me, the way certain thoughts do, the ones that don’t quite feel like they belong to you.

The thought was this: I wonder if I can make that train move by staring at it.

Not I bet I can. Not I will. Just — I wonder.

The Power of Wonder Begins With a Question

I want you to feel the difference in those words, because it matters enormously. “I bet” carries ego in it. Effort. The need to prove something. But I wonder is open. Innocent. A child standing at a door with no agenda, just genuine curiosity about what might be on the other side.

Perhaps that is the true power of wonder.

I was eight years old and I had no framework for what I was about to do. No spiritual teacher had told me about the power of thought. I hadn’t read any books on consciousness or intention or focus. I was just a little girl in pyjamas and a housecoat sitting on cold tiles with a question hanging in the air in front of her.

So I did the only natural thing.

I stared at the train. I stared and I stared.

Now I don’t know how long it took. Time does something strange in moments like that. The room fell away. The chill fell away. The depressing bouclé couch and the ashtray stands fell away. There was just me, and the train, and the quiet open space of I wonder.

And then that little train — engine in front, caboose in back — began to move.

It made one full round. Through the tunnels, over the hills, past the cactus and the water hole, all the way back to the station where it had started.

Then it stopped.

I sat very still. I thought: What just happened?

I had no answer. I still don’t have a complete one, if I’m being honest. But I knew — the way you know certain things in your bones before your mind can catch up — that I had just touched something real. Something that had been there all along, waiting for someone to simply wonder about it.

Waiting for curiosity to notice it.

I never told a soul for years. I was certain no one would believe me. So I kept it tucked away, this small private miracle, like a stone in my pocket.

Wonder and Curiosity Open Doors We Cannot Force

But I’ve been thinking about that night lately. About that little girl alone in the dim room. About the specific quality of the thought that came out of the blue — not forceful, not trying to prove anything. Just I wonder.

Because here I am, six decades later, and wonder is still the most powerful word I know.

The power of wonder has shaped far more of my life than certainty ever has.

Not certainty or strategy and definitely not I’ve got this figured out.

Just — I wonder.

I wonder what happens if I show up and tell my stories. I wonder what becomes possible when I stop needing to know the outcome before I begin. I wonder what moves when I stop forcing and start simply… looking, with open eyes, the way an eight-year-old girl looked at a train on a winter night and asked a quiet, egoless question of the universe.

That little girl already knew something. She just didn’t have the words for it yet.

Maybe that’s been true all along.

I wonder — has something like that ever happened to you?

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Experience Egypt Through the Eyes of Wonder

As I write this, I am in Bosnia with a group of beautiful souls exploring sacred places, ancient mysteries, and the unexpected ways spirit speaks to us when we slow down enough to listen.

I have found that certain places in the world awaken the same quality of wonder I felt as a child sitting on that cold tiled floor staring at a train.

Egypt is one of those places.

Not because it gives us all the answers, but quite the opposite.

Egypt invites us into deeper questions. Questions about consciousness, history, symbolism, spirit, and the hidden dimensions of ourselves that are often overlooked in the noise of everyday life.

In March 2027, I will once again be leading an initiation tour through the temples, sacred sites, and timeless landscapes of Egypt. Together we will explore places few travellers ever experience, including private access opportunities that make this journey truly extraordinary.

If something in you resonates with mystery, wonder, and the possibility that life may be far more magical than it seems, I invite you to join me.

With love,
Dehyana