The shadow of a flagpole tells time if you know how to read it. Ordinary things hold lessons if you know how to look.

A pole and a patch of ground will tell you the hour if you know what to watch, which means the information was always there and the knowing was the missing part. Most ordinary objects are like that. The lesson is not hidden, it is just unread, because nobody taught you that a flagpole was worth looking at. Curiosity is mostly the habit of assuming the plain thing has something in it.

Choose one dull object in your day and figure out how it actually works. A lock, a bus timetable, a free throw. Ten minutes of attention changes what you can see.