I fell asleep looking at this photo the other night. Danny, in addition to inspiring me when we talk, inspires me with his photography (can’t wait ’til I can afford to buy some of his prints).
So, I fell asleep thinking about birds, and flying. It was the title of the photo, though, that really got me to think.
How hard do you fly?
Since I was little, I always wanted to be able to fly. I used to stand in the back yard, arms straight up in the air, and imagine that I could fly around my neighborhood much like Superman. But as I’ve grown up, I imagine flying less and less, to where that imaginary memory doesn’t feel real like it used to.
It seems to me that as we grow and evolve, our imagination begins to take a back burner to our lives. While I never had an imaginary friend — I had a little sister that never left me alone, why would I need to make up a friend — I used to imagine lots of things that I used to think was absolutely normal and real.
Flying like superman, for one. I also used to imagine that I could walk on the ceiling, holding a mirror in front of me so that I could only see my new “ground.” I’d imagine that the tree in our front yard was really my home; I had branches that were designated to be my bed, others for the living room, and so on. I would pretend to be different people, different animals, different anything.
But somewhere along the line, I stopped playing make believe. I can’t pinpoint when it happened, but I remember one day standing in the backyard, arms straight up in the air, and I could no longer fly. Walking on the ceiling felt more like walking with a mirror in front of me. The tree became only a tree.
My imagination became internalized. I still imagined things, but it happened in the dark, when I was asleep, or when I was throwing words on paper to see what would stick. There was no physicality left to my imagination, there was no one else involved.
I wasn’t trying hard any more. I gave up on flying. It was easier to believe that flying wasn’t an important.
But it is! I’m not flying hard enough in my life. My imagination is the one thing that sets me off from other people, and I’m not using it to my fullest extent. As an adult, my imagination outlet is my writing, and I find ways to put that off, convince myself that I don’t know what to imagine anymore. Imagination takes work. Flying takes work.
I need to try to fly harder, to find that place within myself that allows me to stand in my backyard, arms upstretched, believing that I can fly. Because I can fly.
I just need to believe.
It may be easier to believe that flying isn’t so important, but it’s easier to swallow the reality that some things can’t be achieved (yet) after we’ve given them our all.
We’re so afraid of failures that we console our dreams to oblivion simply because we believe that we will feel better about ourselves in the long run.
But at the end of it, it is always that chase that makes us happy. That nonchalant care for the world that doesn’t care about what’s in the the way. Just whether we’re doing what we want to do.
Maybe at the end of the day, you don’t need to believe. You just have to get up and start doing regardless of what anyone thinks…including yourself.