Wisdom is first the wisdom of the child, meeting life innocently, eagerly, without expectation.

From Alfred’s journal

A boy of maybe four stood in the Hendersons' yard this morning with his face tipped straight up at the sycamore, and when a leaf came down he caught it in both hands like it was the first one ever issued. His mother called him twice. He did not hear her, which I understood. For years I thought wisdom was what you had left after the surprises had been knocked out of you, a kind of hard rind; I wrote whole pages in that direction and they were all tired. Wisdom is first the wisdom of the child, meeting life innocently, eagerly, without expectation, and I only got there by watching a boy who had no idea leaves fall every single autumn. Switch ate a seed he had eaten nine hundred times and made a noise about it.