Rediscover your curiosity by seeing the world like a 7 year old

Do you remember when you were a kid and everything was interesting?  At some point between the time when we can first investigate the world for ourselves and about thirteen we lose our innate drive to figure everything out.  What was once wondrous is now boring and the thought of spending hours upon hours carefully examining a rock is unimaginable.  This loss of curiosity is caused by years of school combined with puberty.  But that’s a topic for another post.  Today is about the time before then, the age of curiosity.

Your average seven-year-old spends a fair amount of time tinkering.  He disassembles things, puts things together, and examines.  He imagines what mysterious objects might be for, and makes up stories to explain what he sees.  He asks why.  I remember that age.  At that age science isn’t nerdy.  It was great.  There was one particular time when I was out with my sister exploring near our house.  We found a small plaque made of stone that had broken in two.  The lettering carved in it was worn away and barely visible.  As far as I was concerned, this was an AMAZING discovery.  We carefully wrapped up our treasure and took it to a safe place (a den in the middle of a grove of cedar trees) to examine it further.  We never quite figured out what it said or what it was for, but the stories and possible explanations that we imagined were incredibly detailed.  We hypothesized with abandon.

You did something like that when you were a kid too.  You found the fascination in the seemingly everyday because it wasn’t everyday to you.  You were new to the planet and for all you knew you had just found a rare and precious gem, ancient fossil, or alien signaling device.  Every new discovery was cause for research.  It was a better time, a more fun time.  But that’s not now.  Now the everyday is just that, everyday.  Most items don’t get a second glance, let alone research or hypothesis.  The curiosity is gone.  But it’s not because you know that much more.  It’s because you don’t see.

Children see the world in a different way than us jaded adults.  They see myopically, close-up.  While adults are good at seeing the big picture, the state of worldwide affairs, how the oil reserves in Venezuela might affect our pocketbooks, kids are good at seeing all the little things that are there in front of them.  Maybe it’s because things are more at eye-level.  The problem doesn’t start at a lack of curiosity, because you have to see the thing to be curious about it, and adults just don’t see most things.

So challenge yourself today, tomorrow, and next week to see like a child would.  Take in your surroundings more carefully.  Focus less inward, on your own problems, emotions, and to-do lists, and focus out onto the world.  You’ll be amazed at what is there.