Imagination 2.0
It’s 1988, you are still just a little tyke and you are walking around wearing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle underwear and superman T-shirts covered in ketchup stains. You are sitting in the sandbox playing with your Tonka truck, big yellow style bulldozing toys. Thinking about digging your way to China crosses your mind a few times, but at this age it’s not China, it’s your grandma’s house as you don’t know much else. You start to make noises in your head and mimic the sounds that you think the trucks are supposed to make, it comes out of your mouth in changing pitches of “brrrmmm” and “pshhh” as you push the toy back and forth and make them crash into each other. You have this whole imaginary world going on in your head where everything makes sense, and if it doesn’t who cares, you just assign some imaginary thing to whatever it is that you don’t understand and go along playing some more.
Life is great, life is easy, life is, as explained by Forrest Gump, “Like a box of chocolates, you never know what yer gunna get..” But at this age it doesn’t matter what you get because you are happy with it. And if you don’t have something you want you just make it up in your head with your imagination and go from there. Simple. Easy. Imaginative.
Where does this skill of being imaginative go when we get older? Where does the feeling of being able to be happy with whatever it is that someone sets in front of you go? We seem to lose it, but why?
Is it because we get older and reality hits us? Because we have bills to pay and work to do and the strain of everyday life or everyday realisms hit us like a ton of bricks? We possibly start to trick ourselves that only things that are monetary can bring us happiness. We need to buy this motorcycle or this car to be happy. The trip to the Maldives is the only ways that I would be able to get some relief from everyday life, etc. Why is that, why do we get into this type of rut?
Who knows, I am just to get to the bottom of one aspect of people being happy because of reasons that don’t revolve around money, physical property or beauty. It seems it’s quite hard to do, especially if you cut out family and friends. Can we be happy by ourselves?
Just something to munch on during your hump day……
Posted in: imagination, just do it, random thought, thinking on Wednesday, August 5, 2009 at at 10:51 AM
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Happiness is not all about money, you're right there. But if you have so little money that you have valid concerns about your own survival and future, then the lack of it does cause unhappiness.
'Simple happiness' is a nice concept, but it isn't always possible. Sometimes the real world really is more complicated. Because no matter how much you would like to see the world through the eyes of a 4 year old forever, you would not be the person that you are, or where you are today, if you did. It is not about lack of imagination, either (trust me on this, I have the most active imagination of *anybody* I know).
To be simply happy all the time, you need to have all the simple bases covered. And by that I mean, clothes, food, roof over your head, gainful employment and the knowledge that you will still have the same bases covered for the forseeable future. Maybe even someone to rub your feet at night would help too. ;)
My point is that you don't need to have a lot of money, but you need to have enough that you know your survival is affirmed for the near future.
Simple happiness sounds on the surface like a simple concept, but it is most often evident when the spirit is free to just *be*, and not having to cope with the legitimate stresses of wondering if you can pay rent next week.
I would argue that in fact 'simple' is a misnomer. Simple happiness can be very complicated indeed.
(Not to disagree with the idea that in an ideal world we would all be simply happy with our lot no matter what, of course. It's just not the way things are.)
Agreed, refer to Maslow's hierarchy of needs and work your up from the bottom. :)
I was always a very creative, imaginative child. I believe as we get older, some of us trade that in for "responsiblity." We take the safer route in life.
so are you happy you chose the safer route or would you rather take the risky route if you were to look back and do it again?
"Can we be happy by ourselves?"
As long as u r not completely isolated, and you know of a way of occupying yourself. For the most part, this wouldnt work for u Bamer, because ur not an introvert.
Being by yourself is easy, but being happy is hard. for me it would be a challenge to get the balance of the two just right as well. i'm more of a giver, so no i would not be happy in my own lonely bubble.
"...I'm so lonely, ohh so lonely... I have nobody to call my own...."
Reminds me of the Akon song. :)
i love akon, but this is by far the worst song ever written... yuck