Imagination

Imagination. We use it so abundantly as children, and then somehow it seems to slip away some time. I remember many days in elementary in which we ran around, pretending to be this, or that, even believing it to some degree, and creating worlds and people on an everyday basis. It’s such a powerful thing, the imagination, but somehow, at a certain age, it’s like a switch turns it off. Boys start hanging out on the blacktop and playing sports. Girls start sitting on the playground and gossiping. It comes at different times, but eventually seems to happen to all.

Why is this? Looking back, I think I looked forward to recess more, enjoyed our off-time more, than in after days when it wasn’t “cool” anymore. Imagination is becoming a lost art; it seems that at younger and younger ages the switch is turning. And yet it’s such an important thing. For without it, what would we accomplish, or achieve? Without the will to dream of things, we would be nothing. But for some reason we’re moving away from it at an alarming pace.

Some will tell you that it’s because of TV and video games. I wonder, though. When I watch or play those, my imagination is rather fired off rather than diminished. Watching such things stirs me, and brings one to imagine the glory, the adventure, and the deeds (or the love, as the case may be). They were spawned by people who had very vivid imaginings. Why shouldn’t they aid our thoughts?

Whatever the reason, it becomes more important that we can remember how to dream. It becomes more important that we can create and dream of better things, imagine things beyond. Because as far as we seem to advance, if we lose the truths that we bear it is doom that we go to. If we lose our thoughts of freedom and of peace, then we will only sink deeper. For it is this that give us our edge; our ability to remember what we fought for and our ability to dream of even better things. If you can only imagine…and believe.

Because there’s more out there than we think of nowadays. It tears my heart to see the interest of people who just want to “get rich quick”, as they say, going into the stocks and I-banking and all of that just for the money and not because they care. It pains to see scandal and such grace the headlines, because people don’t really care anymore. Most of the young people I know are idealists, but it’s lost as time gets on. Some remove it in tasting the bitterness of their pains. There are some, though, who just dismiss it as a fancy of childhood. Is that what it is? Is that what dreamers are, people who are lost in their youth, wandering and witless among their fantasies? Say not so! For there is the hope and wish of mankind. Remember, as you draw your path through the world, to dream again…