It's like a sock in the dryer of life, if you will. You know you had it when you put it in, but by the end of the cycle, it mysteriously vanished. 

During a recent nighttime drive with the family, my two-and-a-half-year-old daughter was performing what I can only describe as an interpretive dance of joy over the moon. Yes, the moon—that same celestial body that's been hanging around our planet for roughly 4.5 billion years, inspiring countless poets, lovers, and NASA budget requests.

The thing about children and wonder is that they're remarkably good at it. 

Terrifyingly good, actually. 

They find fascination in absolutely everything which makes them delightful companions but occasionally maddening ones, especially when you're trying to get somewhere in a hurry and they've discovered an especially interesting piece of lint.

I was pondering this while being forced to listen to "I Will Go Sailing No More" from Toy Story for what was approximately the four hundredth time that day. 

Scientists have actually looked into this phenomenon. 

Frank C. Keil at Yale University discovered that children's love of science doesn't fade because they learn too much about it. Rather, they lose their sense of wonder itself, which is rather like saying you stop enjoying meals not because the food gets worse, but because you've misplaced your ability to taste. It's both profound and slightly worrying.

Americans have developed a particularly efficient system for extracting wonder from daily life.

They start early, mind you, with that peculiarly American question: "What do you want to be when you grow up?" Not "What makes you curious?" or "What fills you with delight?" but "What economic role do you plan to fill in our vast machinery of commerce?" It's rather like asking a butterfly what kind of spreadsheets it plans to produce.

The typical American office building is an architectural achievement of sorts, though not in the way anyone intended. It manages to be simultaneously enormous and cramped, modern and outdated, populated and lonely. 

It's rather like someone designed a habitat for humans after reading about them in a book but never actually meeting one.

Europeans have taken a different approach entirely. 

The very concept of stopping everything in the middle of the day to rest and reflect is so foreign to American culture that trying to explain it is like trying to explain synchronized swimming to a cat—theoretically possible, but likely to be met with blank stares and general confusion.

My fellow Italians, who lead Europe in hours dedicated to personal care and leisure, have elevated idleness into high art. 

This philosophy can be distilled into "dolce far niente"—the sweetness of doing nothing. 

It's not just a saying, but an entire cultural framework that's helped Italy maintain the EU's healthiest work-life balance, with only 3% of Italians working extended hours compared to the OECD average of 10%. Perhaps they’ve discovered what the rest of the world is slowly realizing: humanity's cosmic purpose might extend beyond inbox management.

The idea is that spontaneity and adventure can bring joy, pleasure, and meaning. It can also mean taking time to appreciate the sheer impossibility of existence while sipping espresso and watching the world go by, which is arguably a better use of time than any meeting I've ever attended.

We've managed to create a world where you can instantly access all human knowledge through a device in your pocket, and what do we use it for? Watching videos of cats being startled by cucumbers. Though, to be fair, those videos are pretty wonderful in their own way.

The real tragedy of modern life isn't that we've lost our sense of wonder—it's that we've organized our entire society around the premise that wonder is something you do on vacation, preferably while holding a camera and standing in front of something that has been officially designated as wonderful. It's rather like scheduling spontaneity, which is, of course, missing the point entirely.

Wonder, like those hardy microorganisms that survive in the most unlikely places, refuses to be completely eliminated. 

It pops up in the most unexpected moments—like watching your child watch the moon through car windows on the highway.

The solutions are both simple and profound. 

Spend more time doing nothing in particular, embrace uncertainty, and occasionally try to see the world as if you've just arrived here from somewhere else.

This last bit of advice is particularly useful, as it happens to be exactly what children do naturally. 

They haven't been here long enough to become jaded about things like gravity, photosynthesis, or the fact that tiny packets of information are constantly flying through the air and somehow turning into cat videos on our phones.

As I watched my daughter's ongoing lunar love affair through the car window, it occurred to me that we've got it all backward. We spend our lives pointing at things and teaching children what they are, when perhaps we should be letting them teach us what things could be. After all, there's something rather wonderful about a universe that gives us both a moon to wonder at and the ability to wonder at it—even if it takes a two-year-old to remind us of that fact.

And perhaps that's the real secret: wonder isn't actually something we lose—it's something we forget we have. 

We're loud. We're passionate. 

And we're always right—especially when we're wrong. 

But the greatest misconception about us? That we’re obsessed with food.

Specifically eating said food.

Don't get me wrong, the food is f*cking fantastic. 

There's something primal, almost spiritual, about nonna’s six hour Sunday sauce or the chew of fresh cavatelli—an experience that transcends the plate and buries itself deep in your bones.

Oh, the pasta.

All sorts of pasta. Handmade, homemade, drenched in the sauce we’d make every August. Mom's homemade bread is there too, perfect for scooping up every last drop.

Paired with our homemade wine

It's a culinary lineage stretching back to the Renaissance, when Catherine de' Medici's cooks introduced French nobles to the revelatory concept of not boiling everything into submission. 

But if you think this is about osso buco or arancini, you haven’t been paying attention.

You see, for us, food is a mere backdrop. A warm-up act, if you will, to the main event: the table.

I remember one summer we visited family in Italy, at my father's childhood home.

A house older than the United States itself, located about an hour outside of Napoli somewhere in the mountains of Caserta.

Two halves of the same coin reunited—the family that left the old country for opportunity in America, and those who stayed behind. We squeezed over 40 of us around a few very long tables.

Cousin Vincenzo slinging pizza out the back of his horse-drawn pizza oven. Another generation of kids running around.

Stories being shared.

Soccer balls being kicked around.

American football being taught.

It was chaos, beautiful chaos.

The table is where life happens.

It's where we argue, love, laugh, and occasionally—if we're lucky—listen.

The food?

Sure, it's there, draped in garlic, rich with olive oil, coaxed into perfection over hours, sometimes days. But it's not the star. The star is the cacophony of voices that rise and fall with the passing of plates. The stories, the long-held grudges, the unsolicited advice from relatives who are always right and forever wrong.

Growing up, meals were an event, a time investment.

None of this microwaved, grab-and-go nonsense.

In today's convenience-driven world, it's easy to forget the importance of the table. We've traded it for drive-thrus and delivery apps, thinking we're saving time when really, we're losing something far more valuable.

We never ate just to get through a meal; we ate to savor the experience, to prolong the togetherness. The idea of sitting at a table for hours, long after the plates were empty, was something of a ritual. It wasn't just about nourishing the body—it was about feeding the soul.

Looking back, a memorable (often repeated) “argument” was when Nonno would ask why you decided to go out to eat last weekend with your girlfriend instead of eating in.

“Non spendere i soldi! A casa si mangia meglio.”

“Sì, nonno. Ma volevamo provare un nuovo ristorante.”

Or the stories he’d share.

Like the one about how his parents and brothers and sisters would feed the same group of four American soldiers during WWII.

And when the Nazi’s would come knocking on the door, they’d hide the Americans.

**thump thump thump**

“Mach die Tür auf. Wo sind die Amerikaner?”

And when Nonno finally moved to Hamden, Connecticut many years later, their neighbor was the son of one of the soldiers they used to feed.

I digress.

In my family, the food was spectacular—no argument there. We grew a lot of our own vegetables and fruit. Had our own chickens and eggs.

We even had a freaking peacock!

But the food was never the star of the show. The real magic happened at the table, long after the last bite was taken. It was in the shared stories, the loud laughter, and heated debates that we found connection, history, and love.

Now, with my own daughters and family, the table may have transformed in a physical sense, but its essence remains. We still use it as time to laugh, talk, and uplift.

Every meal time has become a reminder that it's not just about what's on your plate, but who's around the table with you. Take your time, savor every bite, and for God's sake, put down your phone and talk to each other.