Day 61 of Embracing the Wonders of Life – When Snow Rewrites Time

This afternoon in Utrecht, something rare happened. Not just snow—real snow—but something even more unexpected: time bent.

Parents and children flooded the streets with sleighs, laughter, and red cheeks. No hesitation. No planning. Just an instinctive yes to the moment. Watching them, I felt something stir that I hadn’t visited in a long while. A familiar intensity. The kind you only recognize once it’s back. I was suddenly young again.

I remembered that strange magic of winter evenings: the sky slowly darkening, streetlights flickering on, parents calling out “just a few more minutes,” and you bargaining—silently—that this moment could last forever. The cold didn’t exist. Not really. Enthusiasm overruled temperature. Joy overruled time.
Snow does that. It resets the world. It removes layers of routine and replaces them with wonder. Ordinary streets become playgrounds. Strangers become co-conspirators in joy. And adults—if only briefly—remember what it feels like to be amazed.

That, I think, is a true gift of life: the ability not just to remember joy, but to relive it.

As I stood there on my balcony, watching sleighs slide and laughter echo through the streets of Utrecht, it struck me how rare this skill becomes as we grow older. Somewhere along the way, efficiency replaces curiosity. Certainty replaces exploration. We stop playing and start optimizing.

And this is exactly where thought leadership quietly loses its edge.
Great thought leadership does not come from knowing more. It comes from seeing freshly. From staying amazed. From being willing to look at familiar landscapes as if snow has just fallen on them for the first time.

The best ideas feel playful. They carry curiosity. They dare to ask questions that others stopped asking because they thought they already knew the answers. Like children on a sleigh, true thought leaders are not afraid to slide into unknown terrain—simply to see what happens. Snow reminds us of this.

That progress doesn’t always come from moving faster, but from pausing long enough to feel wonder again. To notice. To play. To stay open.

Maybe the real leadership skill of the future isn’t expertise alone—but the courage to remain amazed.

And perhaps, just like tonight in Utrecht, that’s when the most meaningful journeys begin.