Lately, I’ve been trying to be more mindful and present in the moment, and I saw something on the subway the other month that made me smile. It was actually pretty simple: just a mother and her daughter playing a game of “I spy”. The way they engaged each other was just so endearing! The mother had a very matter-of-fact and excitable affect, while her daughter was clearly giddy from learning and spotting all the things going on around her. I spent some time after they left analysing my reaction, wondering why I found it as touching as I did.

Of course, there’s the obvious possibility that it’s simply nice to see two people share that sort of bond, but then we see parents with their children all the time and I can’t remember the last time I saw a family so moving as this.

So, I wondered if maybe I had, despite not being the biggest fan of “I spy”, the pangs of nostalgia for a time in life when I saw the world so differently. You could call it the innocence of childhood, but I think that’s a fairly bland answer and can be deepened.

What is childhood innocence, after all? Intuitively, I could say that comprises a child’s way of understanding and engaging with the world around them, and while I’m no child psychologist nor pedagogical master, I would argue that they undeniably shape each other.

Interestingly, children don’t “understand” the world, adults do. That’s why we spend so much trying to explain things, as they were explained to us. But is this the wisdom of tradition or the ignorance of the traditionally-minded? Segments of our Western philosophical tradition contend that there exists the “Idea” or “Form” of things, which thus gives it some inherent purpose or nature. But is this something that exists in actuality? There’s philosophical precedent in the East that would suggest it isn’t. One of the most important teachings of Mahayana Buddhism is the inherent emptiness of things, which both do not “exist” and do not “not exist”. Free of the imposition of our own blueprints of reality, which may be useful in conventional activity, we may uncover an ocean of possibility.

Who was it, for instance, who first thought that wood might be used to construct homes? Who supposed that we could sharpen rocks for hunting, or that through friction we could create fire? As much as our innovations have severed our impact with the world, they have perhaps also indicated the opposite: that our “idea” of the world isn’t all there is.

And this is the wonderful thing about the child-mind: inquisitive, unspoiled, unsettled, and open to possibility. Seeing that little girl brought me closer to this mindset than I have been for a long, long time. Her unknowing, ironically, means that they may in fact know more than we do. They’re not even aware of it themselves, but unfortunately they’ll know that and plenty more in due time. Having said that, it’s not as though this child-mind disappears entirely: no doubt it rests inside us, waiting to awake, if only we might manage to rediscover it.