Do You Remember the Colors of the World When You Were Born?

My child recently passed the six-month mark.

They have started crawling across the floor, and lately they have been trying to stand and walk while holding onto things.

When they practice, their face lights up with pure excitement.

As if the whole world were a new discovery.

Perhaps the world really is dazzling when you see it for the first time. I sometimes wonder what colors the world looks like from a baby’s eyes.

That thought stayed with me.

1. Does the world really become wider as we grow?

Time passes.

Our bodies grow, our minds grow, and we accumulate experience.

In that sense, the world we know becomes larger.

But does it really become wider?

Think about work.

Projects that move forward simply because “this is how we have always done it.”

Or relationships.

Moments when we quietly give up on someone and say, “Well, our personalities just do not match.”

The more we experience, the more we understand the world.

But perhaps, at the same time, we also begin to fix the way we see it.

2. When did our decision frameworks appear?

When did we begin to see the world through ready-made frameworks of judgment?

Sometimes I wonder whether the world I see is only a single point.

The clothes I choose in the morning. The route I take to work. My plans for the weekend.

Are those really free choices?

Or are they repetitions of earlier decisions, shaped by assumptions I no longer notice?

As humans make more decisions, we refine our judgment.

But perhaps we also narrow the possibilities of the world.

We become better at deciding.

And, at times, worse at seeing.

3. Maybe we need small adventures without precedent

That is why I sometimes think:

Maybe we should occasionally take small adventures that do not follow precedent.

It is fine if it takes time. It is fine if thinking too much makes us tired.

Right now I am trying to build something new from zero.

So yes, sometimes I get tired.

But maybe that is not a problem.

Maybe it is fine to let other people see the awkward, uncertain version of ourselves.

Not every decision in life needs to be perfect.

Some adventures only become possible because we step forward while still unsure.

There are moments when we do not need stronger certainty.

We need a little more courage to leave the familiar frame behind.

4. The world that appears after effort

Sometimes, when you are trying something new, a moment appears.

A moment when the world suddenly looks bright again.

The kind of brightness you notice only after effort, hesitation, and a little sweat.

Perhaps that brightness resembles the colors you saw when you were first born.

Maybe expanding the world does not always mean discovering something completely new.

Maybe it means remembering colors we once knew, before habit, precedent, and certainty quietly reduced them.

Perhaps growing is not only about accumulating better judgments.

Perhaps it is also about recovering the ability to meet the world before it hardens into routine.

5. A small note for those of us already living inside decisions

As adults, especially in work, we often praise consistency, efficiency, and sound judgment.

And those things matter.

But there are moments when our existing decision frameworks become too complete.

They stop helping us see.

They only help us repeat.

This is true in life, and it is true in work.

A team can become trapped inside precedent. A person can become trapped inside their own competence. A workflow can become efficient while quietly losing its openness to discovery.

Sometimes the real question is not whether we know enough.

It is whether we can still notice what our current framework no longer lets us see.

That is a different kind of intelligence.

And perhaps a gentler one.

Closing

If the world once looked brighter, perhaps that brightness did not disappear completely.

Perhaps it is still there, waiting on the other side of effort, awkwardness, and small acts of deviation from precedent.

Maybe the point is not to become a child again.

Maybe the point is to remember that our judgment frameworks are not the whole world.

And sometimes, to live a little better, we need to let the world surprise us before we decide too quickly what it is.