Life presents many great things to experience and enjoy. In most cases these joys create opportunity or the joys continue on for as long as possible, but other joys end abruptly without warning. When people lose something like this they usually are unaware of the loss because the joy got boring or seemed to shrivel. Although people prefer to keep all of these simple joys the worst of all to lose lies in the minds of children. The loss of child-like wonderment is the worst loss of them all. This loss makes children feel more personal to the people and objects around them, this feel differs from adults in that adults experience the potential use in the objects around them causing adults to seem more self-based and less personal.

The loss of wonderment forces people to lose excitement in their lives and to mundanely live out their days in a zombie like state. When children see an animal that they never knew existed, they stare at it and watch the animal’s movements just for the sake of observation. On the other hand, older people observing a new animal want to understand the animal’s origins and why it moves this way or what purpose does this body part serve. Children find themselves in awe of a different being in their presence and truly understand that specific animal’s individuality while adults view the animal in a cynical light and try to understand the animal’s species for personal benefit.

Another example of children being more personal than adults comes from the parent to child relationship in a healthy home. When the father gets home from work he naturally views going home to his responsibility as something good but maybe not the most enjoyable thing in the world. A child hears his father’s car pull in the driveway and begins to get really excited because his imagination runs wild with the potential of the adventures they might accomplish. The child’s wonder creates enough time to save the world with enough time to play baseball with his dad even though bed time is two hours away. Losing this wonder creates a more rational approach, in this manner when dad comes home with two hours till bed people find it hard to even bother starting anything or just playing a quick game of cards.

Another draw back of losing a child-like sense of wonder comes from the idea of trust and second guessing. If someone walks up to a kid and offers him a balloon, the kid will most likely accept the balloon and get about ten minutes of solid playtime out of the balloon. If someone walks up to an adult and offers them a balloon the first question that might pop up in the person’s mind would be “Athrax?” Although the world proves to not be a very safe place and most people should not be trusted, this second guessing happens within families and within trusted groups of people. A child never second guesses unless someone gives them a reason to, adults, on the other hand, jump straight to the second guess without assuming that someone does nice things for other people expecting no return at all. The child’s wonder finds many happy things because they do not second guess, such as knowledge from teachers. Once children get older they start to wonder if a teacher really knows what he teaches.

Child wonder becomes a valuable weapon in one specific circumstance, which is critiquing. Children never break movies down and figure out the true meaning of it, they watch the movie and love the story that it presents solely for the story. Adults rip movies apart and they find a need to look for hidden messages and religious parallels in media while children sit back and enjoy the substance for its substance.

Losing a child’s wonder happens in almost everyone’s life. The loss seems to help improve society and probably proves to be necessary in the growth of humanity, but almost everyone yearns for at least one day to be a child again and to enjoy that wonder for maybe just a couple more hours.