It struck me that the beauty we attribute to children isn’t something they have that we don’t. It’s something they do, which we have long since stopped doing—just describing things as we see them, the...

But here in my hometown, history was like a fine dust that settled out on everything. There was nothing to counter it. The culture had been hardened by a religion suspect of joy, yet fascinated...

I knew in that moment, we were never meant to surrender our childlike innocence, to trade a world in which we fit like a glove for one that hung on us like ill-fitting hand-me-downs. However,...