Of all sights which can soften and humanize the heart of man, there is none that ought so surely to reach it as that of innocent children enjoying the happiness which is their proper and natural portion.

Watching a child absorbed in being happy does something to an adult that arguments cannot. There is no performance in it and nothing being negotiated, just a person entirely inside their own afternoon. Whatever hardness you had been carrying tends to loosen for a moment, which is a good deal more than most things manage.

Let it actually reach you when it happens this week, rather than smiling at it on the way past. Stop, watch for a full minute, and do not narrate it or record it. If there are no children near your life, the same thing is available in anyone doing something purely for the pleasure of it.