One would think that Mary’s enthusiasm would be infectious, but Alma seems immune to the significance of the situation. Maybe this is a product of her charming disposition or, more likely, her age.

It seems as if the older we get the more unimpressed we are by life. When you’re younger, everything is new and different and very exciting, but once you reach a certain age, you’ve seen it all…or so you think. I guess the optimistic way of looking at this phenomenon is that as we get older, we’re just wiser. We’re like King Solomon. In the famous biblical story, the wise king knows that no loving mother will want to see her baby die. He has a unique understanding of how the world works and have a special insight into the human psyche. He clearly hasn’t met all children or listened those things crying.

Prejudice. Wrote a Song About It. Like to hear it?

To an extent, it is true that we get wiser, however, part of that is we’ve become more prejudiced. Not like in the Nazi sense necessarily, but that can be the case as well. Here, I mean more in the sense of pre-judging things. We know that other drivers are going to cut us off right after exit 16 on the highway. We’ve seen it before, and we know it’ll happen again. We’ll feel that way even if we’re not at that particular exit, but in a spot that we think is the same situation. However, there’s no guarantee that these things we predicted will happen. Our mind is just taking shortcuts, making connections and going with them. However, we’re cutting down on the surprises of our life. It’s convenient but slowly new things can stop thrilling us because we think we’ve seen it all. One prejudice after another, our lives are getting smaller and we’re losing our sense of wonder. So, what can we do about that?

Live like a baby.

As Jay-Z—the hip-hop businessman and business, man—once said on his retirement album, “Treat my first like my last, and my last like my first.” He was talking about working hard and staying ambitious, but I’m choosing to misinterpret that and apply it for my own ends. Instead, maybe we should treat every experience like a new one. It’s said that we should keep the wonder of a child, but I’m choosing to one-up that. We should be like babies, treating every experience like our first. That’s real wonder and real enthusiasm. Whenever I see something—literally anything with a color, shape, and movement—I point it out with wonder. Then I become fascinated with my own arm because I not sure where it came from or if it’s actually part of me. Pretty wondrous, right? Stay young at heart, people.

Trivia: Joe always treats every opportunity like his first and his last. That’s why he always he has no idea what he’s doing and knows he won’t be doing it long.