Imagination

When was the last time you were alone? I mean really alone. Not in a lonely sense, but the way where the only thing you have to keep you company was your thoughts. No phone. No computer. No talking. Think about it and I bet you can't remember.

On New Years Eve I was talking to a friend who is a primary school teacher. We were talking about the great conversations you can have with kids (the ones she teaches and the ones I used to coach rhythmic gymnastics ) and we were saying how we felt sorry for kids today. I told her I was worried that children were losing the ability to have an imagination. Who has the time or the need for an imagination when you have your head stuck to a computer screen all day? I'm worried we'll have a generation of kids who don't know how to make believe.

We used the example of when we see families out and about and the kids eyes are glues to their phone or ipad. While I'm sure this keeps the parents sane and we said we may end up doing it, I can't help but wonder what is it doing the kids? As a kid growing up in the late 80s and 90s, if we went out for dinner with our parents we had to, wait for it, talk to them and whoever we were having dinner with. Then, once we'd eaten we were be allowed to go out and play.

My husband and I both recall great childhoods. While he grew up in the suburbs, I grew up in the country where most of the time we were outside riding our bikes, playing chasey, climbing trees or playing stick people. I have a younger brother who always followed my lead with games and we would create our own make believe words.

One day, my Dad came across me playing and asked me what I was doing. I was holding a small branch off a gumtree in my hand making the leaves shake like hair of somebody talking. I told him I was playing Stick People. My Dad roared laughing and asked for royalties. Being a kid I had no idea what he was walking about until he explained that as a kid growing up in the 40s and 50s, he did the same thing. Except he called it Stick Men (we'll call my upgrade of the name moving with the times).

We escaped in Disney movies and books. Maybe I'm not a good example of a child with an imagination because I believe writers have overactive imaginations and maybe I always did. My point is, we were given time to just...be. Sometimes we had nothing but our imaginations to keep us occupied, so we had to work on that.

I think nowadays we are too concerned with kids becoming accomplished adults that we are forgetting one key thing: giving a child the time to have an imagination is not a bad thing. An imagination is where dreams and goals begin. If we have kids doing something every second they're awake doimg sports, learning ,musical instruments, language classes then homework and bed, where's the time to just be a kid?

This goes for adults as well. The older I get the more I'm realising that its ok to take it slow every now and then. It's ok to say I have nothing planned for the weekend and I can't wait! While yoga is a little too slow for me now, I quite enjoy ignoring my phone for awhile and just relaxing. Whether this is lying on the floor just letting my thoughts roll around or going for an early morning walk where I only have my thoughts for company.

I find it is these times that my best ideas for writing come. And why? Because I switched off the internet and tuned into my imagination. I don't know about you, but I love delving into my own world and thank my parents for encouraging it.