Revisiting, Reliving, & Rejoicing My Childhood I Lost a Long Time Ago
And I Hope You Find Yours Again Too
There’s something happening in my life right now that I didn’t expect, and I’m not sure I could have accessed it any other way.
My daughter is 17 months old, and in her presence, I’ve encountered a kind of joy that feels both unfamiliar and deeply remembered at the same time. Not the kind of joy we spend our adult lives trying to manufacture through achievement, status, or accumulation, but something far more simple and far more real. It is unfiltered, unperformed, and completely alive.
And being around her has awakened something in me that I thought I had lost a long time ago.
When I watch her move through the world, what stands out most is her curiosity. Everything captures her attention. A leaf on the ground, a passing sound, a shifting shadow on the wall. She doesn’t rush past anything. She lingers, explores, and experiences each moment fully.
There is no urgency to move on to the next thing, no pressure to be productive or efficient. In those moments, I find myself realizing that I once related to the world this way too. We all did.
Somewhere along the path into adulthood, we traded curiosity for efficiency, presence for productivity, and wonder for control. Without even noticing it, we stopped paying attention.
What strikes me even more is that she isn’t trying to be anything at all.
She isn’t concerned with being liked, accepted, or understood. She’s not managing how she comes across or adjusting herself to fit the environment. She simply exists as she is…
And in that, there is a kind of freedom that feels almost foreign to me now.
When she smiles, it is completely genuine.
When she laughs, it carries no self-consciousness.
When she looks at me, it feels as though nothing else in the world exists.
And in those moments, something in me softens. Not just emotionally, but physically. It feels less like learning something new and more like remembering something that was always there. It’s tenderness…
What I’ve come to understand is that this experience is not really about her.
It’s about what she’s reawakening in me.
For most of my life, I believed that becoming a man meant becoming serious, focused, and driven. And while those qualities have their place, somewhere along the way I lost access to something equally essential. I lost touch with play, with curiosity, with presence, and with the ability to find joy in ordinary moments.
My daughter hasn’t taught me anything new. She has simply reminded me of something I abandoned.
The most meaningful moments we share are rarely the big ones. They are small, almost invisible moments that would be easy to overlook. I call this the “Miracles in the Mundane.”
The way she laughs when I make a ridiculous sound. The way she becomes completely absorbed in something simple. The way she reaches for me without hesitation or doubt. In those moments, there is no past and no future. There is only what is happening right now. And being with her requires me to meet her there. I can’t be distracted. I can’t be somewhere else mentally. She pulls me fully into the present.
The best way I can describe what’s happening is that I’m getting something back. Not all at once, but in pieces.
In her smile, in her laughter, and in her presence. The part of me that was once curious, joyful, and fully alive didn’t disappear. It was simply buried beneath years of responsibility, pressure, and conditioning. And in my nightly inventory questions this one has been surfacing a lot lately:
When did I become so hardened?
We spend so much of our lives trying to become something more. More successful, more respected, more accomplished. But what if part of the real work is not becoming, but remembering? Remembering who we were before the world told us who we needed to be (something Jung & Hollis talk a lot about).
My daughter is doing that for me without even realizing it. She’s not teaching me in the way we typically think about teaching. She’s showing me, moment by moment, what it looks like to be fully alive.
And every time I slow down enough to truly be present with her, I don’t just see her. I see a reflection of something I thought I had lost. And for the first time in a long time, I feel like I’m coming back to life.
And one day, when she’s old enough, I will tell her how much this means to me and brought deep meaning to my life.
Cheers,
Joe