Children don’t see wonder as a special feeling. It’s just how they live. It’s the air they breathe. They don’t try to understand magic, they just live inside it.

They laugh with their whole bodies. A minute later they can collapse into tears, and then, just as quickly, go right back to building kingdoms out of dust and bottle caps. Their hearts know how to reset.

My niece reminds me of this every day. Her world can fall apart and rebuild itself ten times before dinner. She doesn’t try to control it, she just moves through it, unashamed, unstrategic.

Then, we grow up.
And the world starts clapping for the wrong things.

It rewards us for holding back. For being palatable. For mistaking self-censorship for maturity. We get promoted for emotional constipation and call it “balance.” We start polishing our edges until we become well-rounded humans.

Modern life treats growth like a fetish. Every podcast, every self-help book, every ex-LinkedIn-guru-turned-biohacker preaching that discomfort is your guru, until you realize no one’s actually happy, just “healing” in better lighting.

And that wild, curious part of us? It doesn’t die. It just ferments.
When wonder isn’t allowed to play, it curdles into the need to control. When the inner child can’t dance, it picks up a sledgehammer.

Think about the men who run nations—aging boys with access to red buttons, itching to press them just to feel something. That’s what happens when curiosity turns to power hunger. When you suppress play long enough, destruction starts to look like a game.

We confuse growing up with becoming sterile, with scrubbing away every trace of emotional dirt. We polish ourselves so thoroughly that even light starts to slip off.

But real growth isn’t about bleaching out your chaos. It’s about letting it breathe.
Maturity is not the death of innocence, it’s innocence with better boundaries.
It’s being able to hold the anger, the sadness, the awe, all of it, without needing to detonate the room.

And then one day, you’ll feel it. That little shake in your chest when someone leaves, or a dream collapses, and you whisper, “I’m fine.”
That tremor is your body warning you... you’re about to trade softness for survival again.

Life will keep hurling you into lessons you didn’t sign up for. That’s how it matures you.
But how you rebuild yourself, that’s up to you.

Your softness is your responsibility.
Grow up, but don’t close up.