Curiosity is one of the first languages children learn. Long before they master full sentences, they’re pointing, tugging, and asking questions in a hundred different ways—“What’s that?” “Why?” “How come?” A child doesn’t just accept the world as it is; they poke at it, twist it, and try to make sense of it through their own logic. To them, every sound is a mystery, every shape a puzzle, and every new sight an invitation to imagine.

For adults, curiosity often comes with caution, or the worry of not knowing enough. For children, it’s the opposite—it’s rocket fuel. They don’t worry about the “right” answer. They invent one. And in doing so, they expand the world around them. Children have this delightful ability to answer in ways only they can—not because they are wrong, but because they are weaving fact and imagination together. Truth be told, they aren’t that far off. They simply allow wonder and awe to cradle the facts, making them richer, bigger, more alive. The crack in the sidewalk isn’t just a crack—it’s a secret doorway for ants. The wind isn’t just air—it’s the earth whispering secrets.

Looking through old pictures of my son, I find myself remembering this kind of wonder. His way of seeing things reminded me that curiosity isn’t just about gathering facts—it’s about spinning stories that make the world brighter, wider, and a little more magical.

And I suppose that’s what hooked me, too, when I was a kid. I had a seemingly endless penchant for tinkering—taking apart toys, radios, anything I could get my hands on—just to see how it all worked. For me, that was the basis of all learning: pulling things apart and trying to stitch them back together again. I guess that’s how learning begins for all of us, really.

But somewhere along the way, that natural wonder starts to thin. We trade imagination for information. Instead of asking “what if,” we learn to settle for “what is.” A rainbow stops being a mystery and becomes a diagram in a science book. A boulder on a hillside is just “erosion” or “geology,” not the playful fingerprint of a giant. We still learn, but the learning changes. It gets smaller, more practical, less alive.

That’s the difference between childlike curiosity and adult knowledge. As children, we invent answers to fill the gaps. As adults, we close the gaps with facts, but lose the sparkle of not knowing. And yet, when you see the world through a child’s eyes—even for a moment—you remember that learning was never just about facts. It was about wonder. It was about the thrill of seeing the ordinary and imagining the extraordinary.

I’m not even sure how I got curious about curiosity in the first place. I guess curiosity got the best of me. (Yes, I know—cue the eye-roll or face-palm.) Maybe it’s just my way of tinkering again—this time not with radios or toys, but with ideas. Curiosity has a way of sneaking in quietly, and suddenly you’re pulling apart something you didn’t even know you were holding together.

Looking back now, I see how curiosity shaped not just my own childhood, but those quiet, ordinary moments with my son—the ones that have lodged themselves in memory like little treasures. They aren’t big events, not the sort of thing that makes the front page of a scrapbook. They are flashes: a question asked on a car ride, a theory spoken in the moment, a laugh shared under the sky. They are proof that curiosity, once sparked, doesn’t truly fade. It just changes shape.

That’s one of the quiet gifts of being a parent—or later, a grandparent, or even a teacher. You get to borrow their eyes for a while, to look out at a familiar world and see it made new again.

In their wonder, we are reminded that life doesn’t have to be fully explained to be beautiful. We don’t always need answers. Sometimes, the best part of learning is the question itself—the “what if?” that keeps the world soft at the edges, full of possibility.

And maybe that’s the real gift of curiosity: it doesn’t just shape the way children see the world. It shapes the way we see ourselves—reminding us that the world isn’t just a place to be understood.

It’s a place to be imagined.

…and maybe that’s why curiosity never truly grows old—it just waits for someone to ask, ‘What if?’”

Enjoy this one? You might just be one of us. There’s more waiting at https://xinkblotz.com —stories and reflections that feel like remembering something you forgot you knew.