#bagow

[renest]

Wenig Rot. (Wenig Gelb.) / 24.07.2017

[butmaddnessismorefun]

Took too long.

[bockelson]

My imagination has really suffered since adolescence

I think today I'm finally able to articulate why I feel so much different than I did when I was a child, and why I enjoyed childhood so much more. I mean, I'm happy now, I enjoy a roof over my head and good friends—but my moment-to-moment joyfulness has been sucked dry. At least compared to my childhood.

People have said to me that it is just a part of growing up, but I don't think it needs to be. I think it has to do with imagination. Imagination is the ability to think in terms not bound by reality. As a kid, I was all imagination. I didn't play sports at recess. I played make-believe games. Sometimes we fought against aliens, other times we explored ancient tombs, and if we wanted to play a sport, we made up our own game! It took all of two minutes to invent a new game, and we could make as many new rules as we wanted as we played.

But now I'm obsessed with the truth and with being correct. I think a lot of it has to do with my schooling post-fifth grade. Everything became about how things are meant to be rather than about how I could make things be. It staunched my ability to see things that could be, and more and more I was delegated to see things that simply were. But more importantly than that it made me anxious. Because every time I had an idea, I became afraid of being wrong. Being wrong became the worst thing in the world to me. It became embarrassing to be wrong, and so my mouth closed tighter and tighter out of fear of ridicule. Considering I was a ridiculous child, this made me a very quiet person.

My frequency of dreams has plummeted. And when I do dream, I don't fly anymore. I don't explore fantastic realms. They take place on Earth, with people I know, and mostly predictable rules. Every day as a child used to take place in any number of alternate realities. My perception of the world was open to anything, and the world could be anything. My imagination made it so. But now the world is the same every day, because I know what it is supposed to be. And because of this, I limit myself to a very narrow understanding of the world, and I no longer dare to think outside that established system for fear of being wrong.

We all know why this happens: make-believe and fantasy are counterintuitive to the grown-up qualities of realism and pragmatism, right? We are taught that if we do things in the correct way, we will be rewarded, and if we do things the wrong way, we will end up worse off. And in the rarest of situations, being wrong could mean death. Well, no. I think that's bullshit. I think imagination can cooperate with a being self-reliant adult. In fact, it's probably loss of imagination that tethers a lot of adults. Imagination is what lets us solve problems, and to change the world as we see fit.

Now that I've been out of school for almost two years, it's time I start feeding my emaciated imagination. That means less input from TV and rigid curriculum. I want to be like I was once before. I want to be able to wake up and make the world mine for the day. I'll anthropomorphize all my kitchen appliances and give them names if it makes me happy! The point is, if it lets you more ably adapt to the world around you, then do it. That's what imagination is about. I haven't been too kind to myself in this regard. I plan to be kinder to myself in the future.