The Trick to Regaining Your Childlike Wonder | Zach King | TED

Chris Anderson: Our first speaker was supposed to be

the amazing creative filmmaker from LA, Zach King.

But unfortunately, he's gone missing.

We've been trying to track him down.

(Ringing)

Ah!

Zach King: Hey, I’m so sorry I’m not at the conference.

I'm not going to make it, I'm stuck at the airport.

They wouldn't let me in with this, apparently, it's oversized.

Wait, you’re onstage.

Hold on, I have an idea.

If I just set the phone down here.

OK.

This might ...

Oh.

(Laughter)

Hey.

Sorry I'm late.

CA: People of TED, Zach King.

(Applause and cheers)

ZK: I'm glad that worked

because sometimes I get stuck in the screen

and it becomes a whole thing.

I have a question for you this morning.

What is this?

You can have -- a box, yeah.

I ask a lot of people that question,

and most people say it's a box.

But I've met a small group of people who have told me that this is not a box.

And what's fascinating about this group of people

is they're the ones that have pioneered space travel,

explored the depths of our oceans

and created some of the most impenetrable fortresses,

all before the age of five.

Of course, I'm talking about my kids.

See, when I showed them this,

they told me that this was not a box,

but rather a rocket ship,

a submarine and a castle all at once, somehow combined.

So why is it that you and I, as adults,

we look at something like this and we just call it what it is, a box.

But our children, they can see it for more possibilities.

Over the past decade as a filmmaker,

I've been on a quest to see with this childlike wonder again.

So now when I see something such as a pool table,

well, I see an entirely different type of pool.

(Laughter)

And I no longer see a little soccer ball here.

It's actually got some life to it, it's a little Dalmatian puppy.

I no longer see the glass as half empty.

In fact, I don't even see a glass at all.

For me, it's actually a tasty piece of chocolate cake.

(Murmurs and laughter)

See, you and I can still access this childlike wonder.

We can still see and dream with this wonder,

although it may have been a while since we've experienced it.

So today what I want to do for you

is have you regain your sense of childlike wonder

and show you how to do that.

So, if you will,

I want to tell you a story,

and I invite you to imagine with me

that one Christmas, a box just like this is wrapped

and placed under a tree.

And an excited little boy comes running down the stairs

on Christmas morning

and he unwraps the box and inside is a bike.

And although he rides the bike for a few moments around the room,

he ends up playing with the box instead.

Because to him it's a deep, dark cave.

Hello.

(Echoes)

And at the bottom of that cave

is an X marks the spot.

And of course, he's the best pirate on the seas,

so he's going to dig for buried treasure.

(Panting)

It's a lot of work digging for treasure.

(Metallic sound)

And that's when he discovered ...

That he -- (Screams)

Whoa.

That he was not the first pirate to look for this treasure.

But that boy had many adventures with this box over the years.

Once, it was his time machine

that took him back to the age of the dinosaurs.

(Dinosaur screeching)

Oh!

Another time it was actually his bunker to hide from the zombie apocalypse.

(Screaming)

And once he even dreamed that it was a submarine

that took him to the depths of the ocean

until he could no longer hold his breath.

(Water splashing)

But one day, the boy couldn't find the box.

He looked in his room.

He searched the backyard.

And then he found it in the garage.

And when he ran to go play with it,

he opened it up.

And inside were winter jackets.

And this was the day that the boy learned

what the box was actually made to do.

To store things.

Now the box is just a regular box.

The boy ended up packing up his things to go to college in that box

a couple of years later.

Soon after that, he used that box

to move to his first home when he got married.

And then after that, to make room for the baby,

he packed some of his film gear in this box,

placed it in the top shelf of his garage,

where it sat for a while collecting dust.

See, I was that boy

and I'm embarrassed to admit that that box sat on the top shelf of the garage

for many more years after that, not being dreamed with.

So, one night I heard a sound.

(Crashing)

It was coming from the garage and I thought someone was breaking in,

so I went to go check it out.

To my surprise, the box was on the ground,

and my kids were dreaming with the box.

(Kids laugh)

And they said, “Daddy, we’re playing rocket ship.

Come play with us.”

It had been a while since I played with the box,

but I fired on the engine for them.

Sure enough,

after all these years, she still ran and we headed into space.

Houston, we're ready for liftoff.

(Rocket lifts off)

We ended up going just a little past Jupiter,

where we met some friendly space aliens who taught us a really cool sport

that I want to show you, called space soccer.

It's a really slow sport, requires a lot of yoga.

(Laughter)

But it is more fun than golf.

So.

It was there in that garage

that I learned the key to why all our kids see with childlike wonder.

It's because they don't have assumptions.

They don't have assumptions about the box yet.

They haven't been told what it's supposed to do

or what it's supposed to be used for.

Therefore, they have all these other possibilities.

So for you and I,

as we approach life and try to solve new problems,

if we're able to remove our assumptions for a moment,

we can see with this new childlike wonder once again.

So I want to test this out and see if this worked,

if this experience regained a little sense of your wonder.

So I’m going to throw up my desktop image on the screen

and I want you to hold back your assumptions.

So on the desktop screen,

you might have a few assumptions that you can't hold back,

you're looking at it going, I'm really disorganized,

or you’re assuming that I’ve got too many projects going on,

and both of those are true.

But I want us to look a little deeper to see the possibility.

So let me help clear the way here.

(Leaf blower)

I was actually looking at the background.

Maybe I need a vacation.

You know, it's actually super nice here.

Hey, I'll take that.

So the next time somebody tells you...

Oh, wait, that doesn't make sense.

How do I get out of here?

OK, I can figure this out.

If that's not a box,

maybe it's something else entirely.

Maybe ...

It's a portal.

(Applause and cheers)

So the next time ...

(Applause)

So the next time somebody tells you to think outside the box,

you can tell them,

"Hey, this is not a box."

Because when we remove our assumptions,

we're able to then see with this childlike sense of wonder.

And that's the moment when new ideas can enter the world.

(Applause and cheers)