The intellectual honesty of beginners mind
Try and learn from children. Notice how they see the world, how they play and imagine new worlds, how they react to your interest and mindfulness.
I am the adult that always gets pulled away by children, to go on make-believe adventures in the yard or help design an elaborate drama of stuffed animals. This is almost always preferred to the conversations with the adults!
Kids learn at such a fast pace, taking in 1,000s of new observations each day, discarding most. Modelling in play acts of will, morality, choice, experimentation, and faith. Verbalizing their thoughts for feedback from the adults that have shown them care and compassion. Testing boundaries and tweaking all of these learnings for tangential play, storytelling, or actions that have a fierce immediacy.
Mostly these learnings and regurgitated displays happen without the filters of our particular cultural norms. If the emperor’s tailors are fit to be tied by his Highness’s demands for more extreme couture and deceive him with invisible garmets of such grandeur that only the most faithful and loyal can see; but only a child, lacking in these survival norms, will be able to call this indecency out. It is good to be reminded where we are not being our most intellectually honest, even if by a child.