Where's Your Imagination?

Enjoy all there is to enjoy while you can still enjoy it. People always say kids will be kids or boys will be boys. We always contribute the crazy actions or thoughts of children to their naivety to give an excuse to the bewilderment we may feel. Children’s imaginations are so vivid that by the time they finish their thought, we lose interest because the sheer magnitude of the idea is so foreign to most adults.

I grew up hearing “you can be whatever you put your mind to”. It’s been so long since I’ve heard this uttered. We are in a society that is pushing out more copies than originators. We grow up looking at other’s lives to give ourselves a sense of what we want in life. We learn the same processes from past generations on how to achieve a certain life. It’s only until we decide to move away and think for ourselves what we want to be. Even if you aspire to follow the footsteps of another, you can still add your own spin to it and make it you. We tend to want exactly what we see only because we learn that’s the way to be. As children, we could be whoever we wanted to be and we fully believed it. This type of thinking tends to dwindle the older we get resulting in not only lack of imagination but lack of drive to achieve what we imagine.

Early in my college career, I really had no idea what I wanted to do. As someone who wasn’t well off at a young age, I mentally nor financially could afford to just go through college without an idea of how I wanted to come out of it. Of course, anyone I talked to about college wanted to know what I was going to do when I graduated, and if I didn’t have an answer they were quick to give me one. This became a problem for me because in a way, I felt like I wasn’t given any leeway to figure it out. Everyone wanted an answer about what I wanted in life, when I just began to live it. Growing up we only learn how to think and see how others do. If we aren’t given the space to think in our own way, we never learn to think for ourselves. This dilemma is then pushed back on us as if we are the problem. Sadly for those who take longer to find this answer are deemed lost and forgotten about. Our childlike imagination is stripped from us before we even finish childhood, leaving us in a space between adolescence and adulthood without proper guidance.

I began to find my own thought processes when I was alone and could think to myself. To activate your childlike imagination you have to immerse yourself in childlike curiosity. When you begin to ask ‘why’ like a bored two year old is when you begin to think for yourself. This is when your thoughts become your own and you can see things you haven’t seen in so long. You start to see things differently and remember what it was like to simply be engaged and enjoy your environment. There was one time I was sitting outside and picked up a stick. Just like a kid, I started to use the stick as a wand, then a guitar, then it was a wishbone. Something like this would be obscene to another adult if they saw me outside pretending to be Harry Potter or the lead guitarist at a concert. They wouldn’t understand the inner joy that took me over. Forgetting about my adult responsibilities for ten minutes felt amazing. I could relinquish my adult behavior to relive childhood and be full of natural dopamine like no drug could give you.

Sometimes we can get carried away with life. Or we’ve been so stuck in one way of thinking that any other path would seem like a hassle to embark on. We are all still kids at heart. Allow yourself to ask questions. Use your imagination and allow your inner creative to flow. Obviously your imagination will take you somewhere different than maybe your closest friend but then you could have a collab, like Jimmy Neutron and Timmy Turner. Being an adult doesn’t get any easier, so next time you have down time, be childlike. Go to a park and play ball, color outside the lines without a care, make slime and get a lil messy, then sing a song while you clean it up. No matter your age, you can still think of something fun and enjoy life without spending money or being under the influence. You might surprise yourself with how imaginative you can really be. The possibilities are endless.

-J