When is it that we lose our imagination? When is pretending not cool anymore? When do we think it’s not okay to laugh or joke? When did the world get so serious for each individual? These are serious questions I often wonder. What happened in our youth when there was a dramatic shift that caused us to forget about cartoons and lego?
Now we sit in big offices, stressed out and overweight wishing the kids would stop making so much noise when we get home. What happened, what filled the gap between yelling at the guy who cut you off and not being able to sleep on Christmas Eve over sheer excitement?
Remember when never never land was a place so real you knew one day you’d visit; maybe never come back like one of the lost boys. And how about when you dressed up like your favourite super hero planning to save the world? Which one of us dreamed of being a Criminal Lawyer and who dreamed of designing a pipeline that will suck oil out of the earth?
Once a week I hang out with some kids which is something I look forward to. We play all kinds of games like, hide and seek and freeze tag. We get to be the fastest race car driver ever, the strongest lion in the jungle. We get to be anywhere we want to be in that moment, and that’s what I love about it. I go to the same place day after day, same drive, the same location and see the same people but every single time it’s different. There’s a new game, a new animal, a new adventure. These are things we forget about when we grow up; we forget how magical it was to be Cinderella, or how proud we are when we saved the day. For that instant, as long as I’m around those kids nothing matters, stress is relieved, troubles go away, problems seem minimal if at all and the biggest issue that arises is what game we’ll play next or what game we choose. And that’s it, wouldn’t life be simple if we could think this way, if we could shut our minds off just for a moment to pretend, to make believe, to not take everything so seriously?
What if we took a few moments out of the day and remembered what it was like when we were kids, what if we actually played a game, a game that didn’t matter if we won or lost, only that we played. What if there was no winner, there was no ending and there was no real purpose; we did it just to do it. Think life would be so serious, think we’d always be so stressed out we can hardly function?
I tell the kids I hang out with I’m from the moon. I was messing around one day a told a kid that and the look in his eyes spoke a thousand words. I saw excitement, belief, and adventure, I saw something that I’d likely never seen in an adults eyes. So now, that’s where I’m from. A plane goes by, that’s my rocket ship, they’re coming to pick me up soon. My keys fall out of my pocket, those are my rocket keys. Where’s my rocket ship, well that a secret, if I told them, then everyone would know. Oh what fun, seriously, I love it.
I understand most people reading this couldn’t imagine how much fun pretending is, I can’t really explain it. Maybe I’m not like most people, I like remembering what it was like to be a kid; no troubles in the world, no responsibilities, no anything but toys and fun and well listening to parents but what kid does that anyways.
It’s hard to imagine what kind of impact you have on a child that you don’t see very often. Recently one of the kids presented me with his very own rocket ship gift just for me. It was made out of a cup, it had wings and stickers and a point on the top, it was fantastic in all actuality. The imagination alone that took to make that rocket ship is astounding.
I keep it right at my desk to remind me of how positive imagination and pretending can be. The cup turned into a rocket ship with colors and stickers represents something playful and fun in this serious world. Ironic that it sits on my very serious office desk, with all my files, computer, paperwork and pens. But I’m going to keep it there, I don’t know for how long, but it’s a good reminder that things don’t have to be so serious, everything in this life can be lightened with one glance at a single coffee cup turned into a rocket ship. It doesn’t take long for me to see myself in that rocket ship taking me toward the moon to where I actually live. I can go there any time I want and I can come back just as easily.
And if you took just a moment to imagine, believe and pretend in an instance you could be, go or have anything you want.
