An Eye For Wonder
How Children Rekindle Eternal Wonder
As you get older, there are seemingly fewer and fewer truly magical experiences to be had, the kind that hit you with the pure, unfiltered awe of something newly discovered by a child.
Of course, an infinity of experiences exist. But as the years wane, they grow harder to grasp. Or maybe it’s simply harder to receive them in that wide-eyed, childlike fashion. The world has taught us its rhythms too well: the alarm, the clock-in/clock-out, the endless ledger of responsibilities. Wonder tends to get filed away with the other relics of youth if you’re not careful.
I’ve found that having children, and giving them a world rich with opportunity to discover these experiences, has provided an awakening of that magic in myself. The way they see something for the first time, that we’ve see many times, with absolute astonishment can make you stop and take a closer look. It’s almost as if these little ones become a new life source of wonder for us. Especially as we adults sink into the toils of adulthood, working to create a meaningful living for our families, we can sort of lose that eye for magic. The daily grind dulls the lens. The ordinary starts to feel… ordinary.
Then they grow old, and so do we. Those magical years slip into memory. We creep back toward the void that waits for every mortal, again, if they’re not careful. Until, if you’re fortunate, you get that call—or better yet, that first cry. And there he or she is: your grandchild. Once again, the eye for wonder reopens in you.
But this time, it’s exponential.
This is the fruit of your fruit.
This is becoming deeply rooted and eternal.
And if you’re mighty lucky, you chance the experience of witnessing the arrival of the third generation.
There, you hold a being whose every feature carries echoes of faces you’ve loved and lost. You watch your child—once the wide-eyed discoverer—now steady a tiny hand, guide a first step, whisper the same lullabies you once sang. The circle doesn’t just close; it expands outward in rings of living legacy. The wonder you felt at your own child’s first laugh returns, but layered now with the knowledge that this laugh will echo into decades you will never see. It is the ultimate proof that we do not drift alone toward darkness. We branch.
In a world that preaches radical individualism as salvation, where the self is the only sacred thing and family is reduced to an optional lifestyle accessory, this exponential wonder feels almost subversive. Modernity wants us rootless, mobile, unencumbered. It sells us the illusion that fulfillment is found in career peaks, curated experiences, and personal branding. Yet the soul knows better. The soul hungers for continuity. It recognizes, in the grip of a great-grandchild’s fingers, the invisible threads that tie generation to generation, the living trees our ancestors planted so we could stand in their shade.
I think of the old man in *It’s a Wonderful Life* barking at George Bailey about the tree his great-grandfather planted. It’s never really about the lumber. It’s about the fact that someone, long dead, put something in the ground with the quiet hope it would outlast him. That single line always guts me because it reveals the lie we tell ourselves in our darkest hours: that our ordinary days of sacrifice and stewardship amount to nothing. No, they amount to everything.
The homestead teaches the same lesson, season after relentless season. You plant, you tend, you lose some to frost or fox or sheer stubborn soil. But the ones that take root? They feed your family today and may shelter your descendants tomorrow. The same is true of the family itself. Every bedtime story read, every messy kitchen science experiment, every scraped knee kissed and “why?” patiently answered, these are the real plantings. They are not glamorous. They will not trend. But they endure.
So as the years press on and your eye for wonder seems to recede, remember this: it hasn’t vanished. It has simply gone underground, waiting for the next generation to call it forth. Having children rekindles it. Grandchildren multiply it. Great-grandchildren, should heaven grant you that rare and mighty blessing to witness in mortal flesh, make it something approaching immortal.
Don’t be afraid to plant something that outlasts you.
Tend the kin. Keep the eye for wonder open.
The void only wins if we let the chain break.
But when we choose to extend it, when we choose to be the link that carries wonder forward, the magic doesn’t just return.
It becomes eternal.
And that, my friends, is the deepest magic of all.
Thank you for being here with us.
-Greg
