Growing Up

A few years ago I realized that I was losing my imagination and that I was becoming dangerously close to losing my ability to believe in anything. I find that very sad, it feels like losing some fundamental part of myself. I guess the old adage is true: if you don't use it you'll lose it. I mean I would still day dream like I did when I was a child, but instead of imagining myself in Neverland with Peter Pan I would now imagine how my date that night would turn out. I just was not very creative anymore. My painting as well as my writing suffered for the extreme lack of creativity so I decided that I had to do something to prevent myself from losing my imagination for good.

When I was younger and any sort of magic was... well magical for me. I loved imagining that inside all flowers lived little fairies and that the animals and plants could talk to people if they would only listen closely enough. I liked to imagine that one day I would wake up and I would be able to fly, or become invisible, or breathe underwater. I also had a very active imagination. I would make up worlds for all of my friends to play in. We would spend weeks pretending we were warriors who were saving the world form dragons or evil sorcerers.  I lived for helping others believe in the possibility that there was something fabulous out there be it magic or whatever else. I loved the possibility that anything could happen or be real.

One thing that I noticed was that my inner critic stifled a lot of my more imaginative trains of thought because I was afraid that if I would ever write about something like an underwater world or fairies or dragons or whatever people would not take me seriously as a writer or an adult.So, stifling my inner critic was the first step in making myself more creative. I still feel like I lost a lot of my childishness, which now makes me sad because when I was younger I was so eager to become an adult. I wish I did not have to make myself grow up so fast, I could have taken my time and enjoyed the moment but I was always striving to be seen as more mature and more adult. I wish that growing up did not mean becoming cynical and logical. I enjoy having my head in the clouds and I am no longer ashamed to admit that. I just hope that one day I will be able to be as imaginative as I was as a child.