Being Adult and Imagination

As a child, it seemed like there were so many uses for imagination, and there was such encouragement from lots of different areas, and also opportunities to use imagination. I remember spending all day long at the pool, inventing all sorts of things, and having fun really feeling like a part of those things, being shipwrecked at sea, then being a mermaid saving people, then other things. I had a different idea when I started this post of where this was going, and I may get around to that eventually, but now I am thinking more about what I miss from my childhood. I miss that, the other worlds, but I think also sharing them with someone else, having someone there who believed in it just as much as I did, and our belief spurred each other on, even though we knew it wasn't real, we took it seriously. My best friend and I were having a conversation about this a couple years ago, and we were at a pool, and so we decided we would try. After a few minutes, it just felt awkward, and we went back to resting in the hot tub.

I think it takes more tangible things now for me to step into that world. But then there is also the double-edged sword of responsibility. My sister and I were playing with Prairie the other night with a Little Tykes house, and I got more into that than I have anything in a while. But I feel held back from completely indulging in such a world, because of the things that need to get done, people need to be fed, kids need to go to bed. I think I want to learn to let go more, to let go sometimes of all the responsibility, of all the things that need to get done, and just live for that little small figurine I am holding, in whose world you can bungee-jump off a house. The other thing my sister and I did when we were younger was play with our animals, I had bears and she had a family of pigs. The bears had a huge house with a pool in it, and all sorts of neat things in it. And they would go and visit the pig family. I think that is something I could get into again, and I have thought about that, and I really want to make a little village of felt animals, and a beautiful town for them to live in. It is a magical world of plenty, the land of imagination.

Sometimes it seems like as an adult, there is not as much use for imagination. There is use for innovation, in changing things, and that is valued, but I think imagination is undervalued. My thoughts on first starting this were to do with the transformed uses of imagination in the adult world, and how it can be helpful in new ways, but I got lost in reverie, and the desire to recapture some of the old uses as well. But I think the biggest use of imagination in the adult world is to be able to imagine what someone else is going through. It is to look at them, and see how they are acting, and imagine a reason for it, and not just a bs reason that makes it so you can be annoyed with them, but a real genuine reason that gives you compassion for them. It can calm annoyance, and rise us to a higher plan of love and kindness to others.

And I think there is a lot of value in imagining reality, in thinking about what facts we may know really mean. I have started thinking a lot more about people worldwide, and about all the hungry people in the world. Some things are so tragic, and so far out of my experience that I can't even really imagine what they must be like. I have read a story about a woman and her husband having to choose which of their children they would have to let starve, so the whole family did not perish. That is something I would never imagine. But I can imagine children whining and crying because they are hungry, and the anguish of a parent who has to tell them there is no food to eat. 36 million people year die because of diseases related to starvation or starvation itself. That is 60% of all the people who die on the earth. I can't fathom those numbers. They are too big, but I can think of villages starving, and villages in Africa, in Asia.

But I can't hear these people's voices. When is the last time I saw a person who looked even anything nearing malnourished? But just because I do not see it does not mean it is not so. And so I remind myself, by imagining what it must be like, and letting these numbers remind me that it is not just in my imagination, but that is really happening on this earth I live on, and that even though I may not be able to help all of them that I can at least start by helping one.

I want to tell their stories, but they are only in my imagination right now. I want to talk to them, I want to care for them. In some ways I think imagination is even more important as an adult, to remember how many desires can be met by simply imagining they are so, and to try to understand what it is like to walk in someone else's shoes. We can't switch bodies or lives with someone else, but we can imagine what it would be like, and I think that is a good first step.