Small, Strange Choices That Open Toward Wonder
Created at: August 29, 2025
Make a small, strange choice toward wonder and let that choice change you. — Neil Gaiman
A Door the Size of a Decision
Gaiman’s invitation begins at human scale: not a grand leap, but a nudge—a door no bigger than a habit. Small and strange is important, because wonder rarely answers to schedules; it sidles in when we tilt the day by a few degrees. Choosing to pause at an odd shadow, to follow an unfamiliar path, or to ask an unusual question alters our trajectory. The change is modest at first, yet it reorients attention, and attention, in turn, reshapes experience. This is a threshold ethic: step across, then let the crossing work on you. From here, the question becomes why such tiny deviations carry disproportionate power.
Strangeness, Novelty, and the Brain
Neuroscience shows that novelty flags the world as salient; dopaminergic systems prioritize learning when we meet the unexpected. Meanwhile, research on awe suggests these encounters shrink self-focus and expand prosocial feeling (see Piff et al., 2015; Dacher Keltner, Awe, 2023). In practice, a slightly odd choice—taking the long way home to glimpse a meteor shower—recruits curiosity and quiets defensive routines. Because attention is a scarce currency, the strange buys more of it, and with attention comes memory and meaning. Thus, the mind is primed to treat the unusual as a lesson. Next, we can ask how such moments move from fleeting sparks to durable character.
How Small Acts Rewire Identity
Identity accrues through repeated action. William James wrote that we are “spinning our own fates” through habit (Principles of Psychology, 1890), while Aristotle’s Ethics argues we become just by doing just acts. Modern behavior design echoes this: BJ Fogg’s Tiny Habits (2019) shows that micro-choices, consistently repeated, scaffold larger transformations. When we choose wonder—even in miniature—we lay tracks for a self that seeks, notices, and welcomes. Over time, the pattern becomes a story we inhabit: I am someone who turns toward the curious. With that frame, literature stops being metaphor and becomes method, which is where Gaiman’s worlds offer a practical map.
Gaiman’s Fiction as a Practical Map
Across Gaiman’s tales, small odd choices open whole realities. In Coraline (2002), a child unlocks a little door “just to see,” and the act remakes her courage. The Graveyard Book (2008) begins when a toddler wanders through a gate and grows into a life between worlds. Even The Ocean at the End of the Lane (2013) starts with a return drive that becomes a plunge into memory and myth. These are not reckless plunges so much as curious tilts: look there; step here; listen closely. The pattern is clear—attention followed by a modest risk creates a corridor. The next step is translating this pattern into ordinary days.
Everyday Rituals for Choosing Wonder
To operationalize wonder, scale it down and make it specific. Try a Wonder Walk: leave without headphones, choose one street you’ve never taken, and name three things you’ve never noticed. Curate a pocket museum: carry a found object and ask one person its improbable origin story. Reverse a routine: read the last paragraph of an article first, then work backward. Use a daily “What if?” prompt at dinner that must be answerable only by imagination. Finally, send a postcard to your future self with one observation that surprised you. These rituals are small and strange by design, yet they create repeated openings. Still, openings are safer when chosen wisely.
Safe Risks and Reversible Experiments
Wonder does not require peril; it thrives on edges, not cliffs. Choose two-way doors—decisions you can easily reverse—so curiosity does not court catastrophe (Jeff Bezos, 2016 letter). Favor low-cost probes with high potential insight, what Nassim Taleb (2012) calls option-value: a new museum at lunch, a five-minute conversation with someone outside your field, a micro-journey to a neighborhood library. By stacking gentle experiments, you protect energy and build confidence. With safety set, the remaining task is perhaps the hardest: to let the change you invited actually take hold.
Surrendering to the Change You Invited
After the choice comes consent—allowing the encounter to revise you. This means reflecting rather than rushing. A simple practice: each evening, write three lines—The strange choice I made; What I noticed; How it nudged me. Over weeks, patterns emerge and the nudge becomes a turn. Carol Dweck’s work on growth mindset (2006) underlines the point: treating surprises as teachers increases resilience and learning. In other words, we don’t control wonder; we create conditions for it and then yield to its instruction. That yielding is the change Gaiman gestures toward—the moment a small door swings wider, and we decide to keep walking.