Imagination

Part of being human is being creative and using your imagination. Watch kids and you'll see that the ones that use their imagination and make up new rules for games and new games as well are the kids who will be having the most fun and sparking the others. Kids who don't use their imagination end up doing the same things over and over and end up bored with life.

Yet, as adults, we rarely encourage kids to use their imaginations. Society tries to crush the creative spark because creative people don't conform. There's been a movement in society over the past decade or so to allow people to be more creative. Parents are becoming concerned over how much time their kids spend on computers. Teachers are concerned over how much information has to be taught and how little interest kids have in learning it. Even businesses are starting to realize that they need innovative people or else their businesses won't grow.

But you can't teach people to be imaginative. It can be encouraged with games and getting kids and adults to free form play time. Arts and crafts can help encourage the use of imagination as well. In fact, encouragement is the biggest factor for people using their imagination. If they are in an environment where they are encouraged to be creative, their imagination will blossom. If they are in an environment where rules are enforced strictly and truth is emphasized in all things (or at least wild imaginings are discouraged) then their imagination is stunted and their creativity is killed.

I started making up stories as soon as I figured out what they were. Mom used to read to us every night until we learned to read. So by the time I was 5 I had been reading and making up stories for over a year. I was still learning to write at that age but I knew my letters and could form simple sentences. By the time I was 9 I had several scribblers filled with poems and stories.

I was lucky, my imagination was encouraged because I had also been taught the difference between imagination and reality. So naturally, I was attracted to a creative person for my mate and we both encouraged our daughter to use her imagination. But we also knew one important fact - imagination actually needs information to feed it.

Any creative person knows that the more you know and experience in life, the more you're able to imagine things that might be possible or are completely improbable. People that aren't very creative or don't want people to be creative, try to restrict information. There are a few reasons for that. One, not realizing that imagination needs information, they think people don't need to know more than what is absolutely necessary to do their job. This is changing as more and more jobs require more information to handle the technology used in those jobs. Second, they don't want people to be individuals because individuals are harder to control. For people who rely on controlling the people under them, ensuring that the only information they get is what is "approved" means they can control how their subjects think, act, and react. Third, people without imagination think that the way they got raised is fine for the next generation and so enforce the same restrictive behaviour.

Teaching children the difference between reality and imagination without destroying their imagination isn't really as hard as some people think. It starts with talking to your kids about everything they read and watch. When your kids sit down to watch cartoons (and later live action shows), talk to them about how it isn't real and why people can't really do the things the cartoons are doing. When they read stories, talk about how a person used their imagination to make up the story to share with others. Explain the difference between fiction and non-fiction. In essence, talk with your kids.

When my daughter was young, her friends used to come over to our place after school until their parents came home. My rule was simple: homework first then play. It took a few days to get into the routine but then they did and they found out that they had more time to play in the late afternoon and evening. Their parents were also pleased because they didn't have to fight to get homework done before bedtime and their kids marks came up. That was because I tried to make doing homework fun as well (it can be done) and encouraged imagination play.Of course, that was also before computers became such an integral part of every home and life.

If asked, a lot of people would say that kids seem to enjoy computer games rather than playing games like the ones we used to. This really isn't true. Kids like playing and if you encourage them to play non-computer games by playing with them, they have as much or more fun. But you have to play with them. For a lot of parents, they don't have the time or energy to play or they also sit at the computer and play games. As a result, we are seeing more and more kids that are socially awkward and inept, withdrawn, and more interested in computers and electronic devices (*cough* cell phones *cough*) than in interacting with other people.

Which is a great disservice to our upcoming generations.

Imagination needs to be encouraged and a healthier balance struck between electronic life and real life. I wish teachers had the time to give students a chance to be creative every day at the start of classes. Simply by assigning a daily project - write or draw or compose a song about a random subject to be presented in class the next day. Nothing long, just something to take up a few minutes of class time at the start of the day to get the kids actively creative and interested in learning. By letting the kids do their own project on a subject chosen by the homeroom teacher, every kid has a chance to use their imagination and try out different ways of being creative.

But teachers don't have the time to do that. Even though it's something they aren't marking, just displaying where kids can look at them, it takes up time that is already overfull with the information needed to be taught. So our kids lose out by not having their imagination encouraged at home or in the school system.

But we can change that. If we're parents or even aunts and uncles, we can encourage the kids we know to be creative and we can also encourage our own creativity. Do it every day. Go ahead, try it.

Ask someone randomly for a subject and then see what you can think of doing up with that subject.