If only we could remember how to think like children

Keith LoBue shared this with his Precious little group. It is a pretty special quote:



Among the mind's powers is one that comes of itself to many children
and artists. It need not be lost, to the end of his days, by anyone
who has ever had it. This is the power of taking delight in a thing,
or rather in anything, everything, not as a means to some other end,
but just because it is what it is, as the lover dotes on whatever may
be the traits of the beloved object.

A child in the full health of his mind will put his hand flat on the
summer turf, feel it, and give a little shiver of private glee at the
elastic firmness of the globe. He is not thinking how well it will do
for some game or to feed sheep upon. That would be the way of the
wooer whose mind runs on his mistresses money. The child's is sheer
affection, the true ecstatic sense of the thing's inherent
characteristics. No matter what the things may be, no matter what they
are good or no good for, there they are, each with a thrilling unique
look and feel of its own, like a face; the iron astringently cool under
its paint, the painted wood familiarly warmer, the clod crumbling
enchantingly down in the hands, with its little dry smell of the sun
and of hot nettles; each common thing a personality marked by delicious
differences.

-Charles Edward Montague (Disenchantment, 1922)