Let me take you back to a time when all that mattered were the questions. When curiosity itself was the driving force, raw, untamed, and free from the weight of purpose. You didn’t care about the price of things or the value they held. The only currency was wonder. Every new fact, every discovery, every “why” that followed a “how” was an adventure. Childhood, in many ways, is a golden age of exploration, not of the world alone but of the mind.

If one manages to carry that same intellectual playfulness into adulthood, they stumble upon a secret most overlook, a peaceful and engaged life. In such a state, the task itself becomes the joy. You dissolve into what you do, and everything else, the fame, the leisure, the need to divide time into compartments, becomes secondary. You no longer think in blocks of work or free time. You are simply absorbed, alive, and attentive.

But there is another path, the one most of us end up taking, the quest for identity. Somewhere along the way, idealization enters the psyche, a sense of who we are as individuals. And we spend our years trying to emerge or cater to certain personas or projections, and we cling long enough that criticism of that persona becomes a trigger point for us.

And when we feel burdened, we try to find some means to cope. We turn to meditation, which in another sense is an attempt to let go of identity. We enter a paradox and begin to battle with ourselves, one thought wrestling with another. We want to be free of something while holding on to it too tightly.

Perhaps peace does not come from finding all the answers but from loosening the grip on the need to define everything. To return, once again, to that childlike curiosity where questions are not a means to an end but the very rhythm of living.