What happened to our imagination?

Art by Dorian Legret

What happened to our imagination? We were once young and filled with inspiration. Creation flickered off our minds and to whatever nothing it then transformed. On every corner, in every place, another sound, another face. The warmth of a reverie, all one could see, was another second we then would waste, playing  games, conjuring tales, flying high on colored sails on the open sea of our imagination.

Life to some people can only be stomached with substances, or with extreme sports, and maybe to others with dancing or drinking. If you want to take drugs, go ahead; I'm not one to judge. Life, I feel, can be a bit taxing when faced with nothingness, as if it drained and sucked all the joy straight from our skulls with the same intensity a college kid chugs shots to impress the numb-headed girls. What can we do to find some relief in entertainment every day? I mean, work already plays a major part in giving us something to do, and that is fine, really, especially when the work we do is meaningful and pleasant. But what of all the times we're just itching to find something interesting to do? We take on things like painting, dancing, or sports, but in the end we might find ourselves in the same place as before, or our bodies give out and we just can't do that anymore. The point is, there always seems to be something missing.

I remember having a fulfilling life. It consisted of having good friends I could visit every week, a regular routine of studies and exercise. It was good, and I hardly felt like I needed anything else. I was, however, pretty hopped up on marijuana and video games. Maybe there's nothing wrong with that, but the fact is, if I resorted to addictions, then there was clearly something missing for me.

I'm not a fun guy, I can say at least. No, I'm actually pretty dull, or at least I have been for the past three years, maybe. Maybe marijuana is the thing that made me less expressive, or maybe it was waking up to several tragic realizations of life I would have to talk about in another article. Yes, I'm saying generally people are dull when I'm almost the dullest of them all, how hypocritical of me. Well, pal, just bear with me.

I realize that as we grow up we have a natural tendency of letting go of our inner fantasies in pursuit of satisfying them in reality. Less, now, because we have video games and things of the sort which tickles that fancy a little bit in all of us. I do believe that there are very healthy people out there who are able to live out their fantasies on a daily basis, but what of us who can't? I say, with all the depression going on in the world, that there is something certainly wrong with how we live our lives, and I'm not about to pin it on anything in particular; but what happened to all of us when we grew up? We used to be able to play with anything, really, as long as we used our imaginations, then naturally we grow up to satisfy our fantasies in reality, but that isn't as easy as it sounds, is it? I would like to think, at least, that it is very difficult. Living life like a child is very difficult. How do you manage to be as spontaneous and creative as a child? It seems to me this aspect of our former childish lives actually atrophied with time as we grew out of our innocent ways, and barriers of repression settled upon us, keeping us from acting out just as when we were children. That is a lot of what separates us from children, isn't it? Acting out, yes, I do believe so.

It was a fabulous world, the outsiders would see, out in the open city. The streets on either side were riddled with chaotic children, rampaging about. It was as if there were a constant riot everywhere you went, a party of sorts. In the busses people would sing and dance, they would play games with each other all the way. On the sidewalks they were running and shouting, as the vagabonds played the springy harmony of their guitars. It was a city where no one grew old, where they all lived their lives plainly through their childish years. They worked with laughter, and played with tears. They all lived happily through their childish years.

I think of it as a livable vision, really. It just takes a matter of liberating oneself from the scales we've garnered as adults, the ones that cover our entire bodies from head to toes with inescapable imagination and spontaneity. That is how I would define it for myself, at least. As if I have become some kind of robot without the capacity to love, except now it has to do with being a little more gay.

It is possible we've fallen into such an orderly fashion of being after great times of hardship that we experience as adults. Historically, yes, but also very much at an individual level. We have to cope with the loss of our childhoods and learn to live in an ever demanding world. All the happy things and memories we had now gone. The mourning of our childhoods is a necessary step in becoming an adult, but it doesn't mean we need to stop playing. I think it is the key to a happy adult life as well, learning to be playful and spontaneous, but not in a forceful manner. In fact, I believe this is something we begin to gain somewhat naturally as we age into the whiter years of our lives, a bit of an easy breezy attitude.

So the question remains. What happened to our imagination? Why did we stop being so alive?