Sitting in a car wash as a kid felt like a ride. Look for that kind of wonder in small things again.

Wonder was never about the quality of the attraction. A car wash is a machine cleaning a car, and at six it was an event, because the standard for interesting was low and your attention was free. Nothing about car washes got worse. The standard went up and the attention went elsewhere, which is why ordinary things stopped working.

Pick something routine this week and give it your whole attention: a wash, a lift, a tunnel, a train crossing, bread in a toaster. Watch it the way you would have at six. Doing that a few times makes the setting easier to get back to.