To myself : where did the magic go?
I have a 4 hour commute almost every weekday this summer. As I take the bus to and fro, I feel a sense of contentment, as Most the time I’d spend staring up out the window at the familiar yet foreign landscape around me.
It’d been a year since I’d lived here, having gone away for college. I’d grown up in this place, and yet the smell of the ocean, the gulls flying over a beautiful turquoise sea under the bright sunlight, and the daily walks of people along the shoreline and unique townscapes are a sight I’d never get sick of and only learned to cherish more having been away.
However, despite the wondrous sights I’d been seeing, the amazing experiences and love for life that I embrace every day, something feels missing.
A few months ago, I turned 19, which technically means, I recently turned 18. In America, this means I’m an adult. That’s pretty scary. This fact genuinely hasn’t really hit me yet, I still feel as lost as a teenager might be when tossed into the clutches of college and “self-actualization”.
Something that has indeed hit me, however, is that my childlike sense of wonder in the world had seemed to slip away some time recently.
Maybe it’s the fact that I’ve finally grown out of being a few sizes too small for the world, a world for someone taller, with more autonomy. Back then, everything seemed so interesting and out of reach.
Or, maybe the reason is that the last time I read a Wizards of the Coast fantasy book was 6 years ago,
Or, that I just survived my first year of fending for myself in college,
Or, perhaps, because the last time I built something with my own two hands, created from my imagination, was in senior year of high school; Almost exactly a year ago.
At that time the magic was still there, and I felt the most “me” when I was creating things from my imagination. Even though I’m learning every day in whatever interests me, just as I had always done growing up, something feels different. Without creating, It’s like the flames of my creativity are being slowly blown out day by day.
I think back at the times almost two decades ago when my friends and I would build tiny huts out of sticks and twigs, and we’d pretend as well rolled down the grassy hills to be spies on a mission. We’d carve out stones from the hardened sand under swing-sets and make balls of mud using the nearby drinking fountains and dirt, pretending that we were making projectiles. Such simple imaginative play had carried so much meaning and joy.
As we grew older, hours afterschool would be spent under the dappled shade of tall eucalyptus trees: creating art from nothing but our imagination, before climbing the golden hills of sun-dried grass and sitting together to watch the sun set over the sea.
Times were simpler then, and though I may never be a kid again, I don’t want to lose my sense of wonder and imagination. I need those qualities to make things I love!
I think that my conformity to the fast-moving world of constant information, and external pressures to become a more technical person (whether it be having to spend most my time in front of a computer, or constantly drawing from references rather than from imagination, or a combination of the two) had, over time, chipped away and put the part of what had made the world as magical as it was for me was in the back seat, its desire to be freed suppressed and ignored in lieu of more important endeavors such as academics and other obligations.
I hope to find that sense of wonder again, to regain my imagination. I want to create.