Outside The Box

January 12, 2012

Have we become a society of “don’t’s” and “should nots”? Are we rearing our children by stifling their imagination? Dickens, I hope not.

Because if Thomas Edison’s father snuffed out his curiosity about fire at the tender age of six just because he burned down the family barn (thankfully before Super Nanny invented naughty corner) then young Tommy wouldn’t have gone on to hold over one thousand U. S. Patents by the age of twenty-two...and we might still be in the dark.

Yet, Thomas Edison was definitely out-of-the-box when he assiduously executed trial and error creating new inventions. Exactly what the expression out-of-the-box means: to be a non-conformist or use creative thinking.

For our purposes today, however, the ‘box’ we want to think outside of is our ‘adult brain.’ Yes, unfortunately most of us mistakenly think growing up equates to growing boring. If you’re guilty then I’m going to ask you to reach into that grey matter of yours and find your imagination. Go ahead, I’ll wait… ta-da-da-da-la-la Oh, you’re back! Did you find it? What do you mean you have to charge it? (Geesh, everyone wants to be a comedian.) Sigh...ready now? Good.

Now, with your imagination firmly in your grasp close your eyes and let your memory banks drift back in time...back...back...Um...maybe we should do this with our eyes open.

Okay, moving backward in time remember playing outside and making friends. Not owning all the gadgets kids have today, we actually played outside...with other kids. Remember...?

One of my fondest memories was playing fort with a huge appliance box. My younger brother and I played for hours pretending to protect the fort from imaginary invaders. And if there weren’t any boxes around we made up games to play. We used our imagination to think outside the box and take us on great adventures where we could ‘do’ or ‘be’ whatever our imagination created. Remember how much fun your imagination was?! It still could be.

Today, as an adult, do you ever think outside your ‘adult brain’ box and have fun like you did as a child? I’m talking so much fun your face hurt from smiling or laughing for hours. Wowzer, you can’t ask for more fun than that! Or, are you stuck in how society expects you to behave? I say, HOGWALLIES to what society expects! You should be having just as much fun as an adult as you did as a child. Maybe more! Who says you can’t? Wellll then...who’s stopping you? You?

Which begs another question, when did you climb in your ‘adult brain’ box in the first place? At what age did you decide you couldn’t have fun anymore? When did you start worrying about what society would say? When exactly did you grow up and grow boring?

Doesn’t matter; what matters now is thinking outside your ‘adult brain’ box, grabbing life by the horns and tickling the dickens out of it. Now that’s what I call thinking outside the box!

Can you imagine…flying into outer space in a refrigerator box? Oh, boy!

Smile, boring is curable!

CanYouImagine@charter.net | www.theBobbiGspot.com