Where has my imagination gone? Earlier this semester I was asked in one of my classes to create a false company and practice creating presentations for it; I was totally at a loss. If my professor had said, ” You are running a business that sells shoes, now convince a department to sell your product,” I would have been fine. Bust out the PowerPoint and away I’d go. But I had to use some level of creativity.
Over the summer, I had the glamorous job of being a camp counselor for seven and eight year olds. When I think about that age group I often think about the inability of its members to entertain themselves. However, I was shocked to find they had the upper hand. We were all standing in the lunch line, and I somehow had the misfortune of being the only counselor, and since lunch was my only break in the day, I was keeping to myself while waiting for my tater tots and Sloppy Joe. I found myself getting bored just standing there alone, and I had left my phone at home, so I was entirely isolated. I would have expected the little girl in front of me to be just as bored. I looked to her for some sort of sign of acting out due to a lack of interaction and she was telling herself a story about the beads on the necklace she was wearing. I looked around to the other children that were entertaining themselves and felt at such a loss. I wasn’t pretending the lunch ladies were evil dragons, I wasn’t pretending that my best friend was a puppy and I was her mommy, I wasn’t even inventing a song about my surroundings. I was staring blankly, bored out of my mind.
It seems that my world no longer has a place for imagination. I have to be structured to succeed. My brain spends so much energy on thinking about the cheapest paper towel brand that I don’t think about what I could invent with the center cardboard roll. My brain is so lacking in creativity, in fact, that I have to write this article because I couldn’t think of a creative topic.
I think it must have to do with focus. As students, we focus on classes and studying and living on our own. All topics that occupy our brain power are tangible and right in front of us. The most imagination I see happen within my friends is whether or not to plant watermelon or pumpkins on Farmville. When we want to relax, we don’t go play outside, we turn on the TV and just stare.
My mother claims to have a better imagination than me because she works with young children all day, and I have to admit that over the summer, my imagination did return to me briefly. Because, as students, we have to be here and now so much, we don’t allow ourselves to venture into what could be, or what would be better than the present. I’m not sure how to capture back my creativity, but I do wish I could be sitting in a fabricated jungle right now, rather than slumped in the back of my art history class.
