I’ve got a couple of daydreams left over from childhood. I’m betting that most of us do, ideas that we once believed with every thread in the fabric of our being but with time were unraveled by things like common sense and maturity and foresight… You know, all those “grown-up” ideals we would have stuck out a green tinted jolly rancher tongue at as kids.
In some ways the sensibilities are good, I mean some of those young ideas were perhaps not the best ones I’ve had. I remember convincing myself that perching on rooftops wasn’t dangerous and was actually a pretty nice place to take in my latest novel. At one point I decided that a journey down a steep congested suburban street was much more interesting when done while sitting on a skateboard with another person riding behind and no ability to steer and no plans of how to stop. During a particularlyangsty preteen time period I laid out a plan to run away from home in the family’s riding lawnmower. My best friend was going to ride in the grass compartment with her keyboard as we fled to NYC at record breaking speeds of up to 4 mph.
Some of these things happened, others did not, and it’s probably more fun and more interesting to let you decide between the two but my point is, I had some very, shall we say imaginative ideas as a kid. Maturity and all those green tongue ideals helped me to recognize them for what they were and carefully set them aside.
The thing is, I also grouped along with them other unlikely concepts that more easily entertain the imagination of a child. Things like like the sheer act of believing being enough to make things so. Or the idea that something truly impossible is still worth taking the time and energy to envision and map out. I just grouped these things along with the impossibilities of my childhood and moved on.
I’m beginning to rethink that.
Friday night I saw some really excellent live music. The kind that just creeps up on you with it’s style and emotion and lyrical content. I found myself gazing at the musicians and *believing for just a moment that if I really tried I too could bring something that riveting and wonderful to someone else. My mind immediately stepped in with self accusations of irrationality and lack of logic but I happened to be paying attention to those thoughts in a kind of different way. I countered them with simple, childlike arguments such as “why not?”
Why not indeed? I haven’t created unrealistic expectations of virtuosity or anything, but I just so happen to have a djembe in my apartment that is calling out to me. Why not give it some time out of my day and have a little fun in the process? Why not ignore thoughts of no, and of I can’t? To be honest the only real “I can’t” I can think of is the one that creates reasons why I shouldn’t.
So although I don’t think I’ll be hopping 2 deep on an old school circa 1985 skateboard and flying down a well trafficked street, don’t be overly surprised to find me strumming meaningfully on some stringed instrument. Or quite happily beating into my drum to the delighted tune of my own heart.
