I was a little more creative before I knew possible and impossible, was a bit more ambitious before practical an impractical formed part of my language. Imagination is a limitless process that gets narrow with years unlike weight and height. When you grow older you tend to be less creative and your imagination slowly suffocates. It is also a surprise I have become more scared than when I was a few years older, is it a coincidence that all my potential is capped?
When we were younger we got all sorts of support, from being encouraged to eat. Being encouraged to say the first word even when we got the word wrong they never gave up on us, when we fell trying to take the first step nobody said stop trying you will get hurt, encouraged to write down our ABCs and spell our names right no matter how many times we got it wrong. We were supported to be confident, but that all changed the older we got.
I remember when I started walking they started to restrain me from walking, when I started enjoying to write they hit me for writing on the walls. When I started eating they scolded me for enjoying a banana instead of porridge, as much as we want to argue they had reasons to stop us from eating the whole fridge or painting the walls with black markers.
Their actions started to affect how we do everything, this very much molded our psyche to slowly behave in a way that society deemed as acceptable; we were trained to fit into a society that nobody truly understands. We were encouraged to abandon dreams that are too big and to settle for what is practical, our brains became reproduction tools.
Maybe just maybe the screaming, yelling and scolding took part of our confidence away.
Why did we grow to be less creative, less ambitious and less happy? Society has rules that hardly change, probably never changed since the first computer was built and wealth was only calculated with cows. How can we let such a system that barely keeps up with the times tell us what we have to be, we can’t be too competitive cause society sees that as wrong. We can’t celebrate our success because society calls that bragging, society says don’t stand out fit in and celebrate those who stand out. We have become less of what we were supposed to be because we allowed society to govern our lives.
Maybe just maybe letting little Sipho go on his little escapades might just bring to him a wealth of adventure that rips open his imagination? Maybe we aren’t all destined to become Teachers, Accountants and Doctors. Maybe your life’s journey is to become an entrepreneur or a film maker or an artist. We as a society and up and coming parents have a responsibility to shake up the norm and change the way our very thinking was conditioned to think. Let’s shake things up and be adventurous and daring in our approach, let your ideas outlive you.
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