There was a time in my life that I had a superb imagination. During my childhood I never read comic books, I just looked at the pictures and allowed my imagination to form the action in my mind. As my reading skills were rudimentary, I paid no mind to the very simple dialogue written to enhance the story line. As I matured and relied on the printed word more and more for information, I realized one day that I had lost my ability to use my childhood imagination. Without the written word to provide me with the correct story line I felt lost & abandoned. I discovered this lost after a long hiatus from entertaining myself with the colorful & inexpensive comic book.
Picking up a comic book for public perusal at my child’s pediatrician’s office, I looked carefully at each picture. Before I could understand the complete meaning of it, I felt compelled to read each caption to complete the full measure of what I thought it meant. I paused, raised my head, looked downward & to one side without seeing anything in particular, remembering that during one time in my life I didn’t have to read the simple dialogue in comic books to satisfy my understanding of the story. In my childhood I just went from one scene to the next without reading, weaving effortlessly the story in my imagination. I attempted to recapture my childhood’s gift of imagination, but it didn’t work for me now. I felt a need to read each and every line of the brief dialogue. I knew immediately I couldn’t go back in time and recapture a cherished childhood gift. Through study and practice I honed my verbal skills, but I had lost my ability to rely entirely on my imagination to interpret my world, as if the profane replaced the sacred. The mystery of imagination became understandable in the verbal. Like all things in life, each step forward has its unintended consequences. garland dale.
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This is interesting. The adult human American mind craves information. It doesn’t want to be caught off guard with missing pieces of information or misinformation. It wants to know where it’s going and how to get there. When I was studying to be a teacher we were taught to give explicit strategic instruction to our students. That way every student was on the same page and had clear expectations of what was expected. Lesson objectives replaced spontaneous learning and imagination was thwarted by explicit instruction. We teach children to wait for the information instead of creatively thinking and using what they already know to make connections for new ideas and as long as they give us the right answers we’re pretty much pleased and if teachers can make it a game the students are pretty much pleased. There are a lot of factors that go into why we are taught to teach like this–like classroom management and class size. Great blog Dad, a lot to think about.
Hey dad, I love to read your blogs and see what Nani comments. So my question is how can one still live out of imagination while at the same time grow older?