S T A T E M E N T

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Wednesday, February 23, 2022 — 7

Read more at 
MichiganDaily.com

When you are young, anything 

is 
possible. 
Princesses 
fly 
on 

magic carpets, fairies lurk in the 
depths of every forest and animals 
seem to always seem to be able to 
speak fluently. There is no greater 
liberation than being a child, mind 
open to the possibility of anything 
and everything. Pure, (literally) 
unadulterated 
imagination. 

Freedom. 

Any day my Hogwarts letter would 

come, or I’d find the fifth Golden 
Ticket, surely to be whisked away to 
the wonderland I always envisioned 
for myself. A vivid imagination, in 
awe of every tree and cloud and Polly 
Pocket doll in all their other-worldly 
wonders. 

I don’t know when I lost that 

imagination, but I mourn it every time 
I sit down to write. At some point, the 
creative person I considered myself 
to be changed, presumably from a 
child to an adult. The girl who once 
spent recess writing a short story 
about a koala ballerina from space 
now cannot produce a 100 word 
poem for class without restlessly 

searching her brain for something 
exciting. 

But how did this happen? Not just 

to me, but to many, both “creative” 
types and not? How do we lose our 
childlike magic, and where does it 
go? Does it fade into the sky, leaving 
us bare?

Losing our imagination begins 

with the psychological changes that 
underscore the shift from childhood 
to adulthood. In our younger days, the 
mind is effortlessly transformative. 
University 
Professor 
Frederick 

Amrine gives the mundane example 
of a saucepan, which children can 
interpret as virtually anything they 
desire.

“The young child is just so 

wonderful,” he explained. “Take 
a saucepan. Well, you know, the 
saucepan isn’t just a saucepan, it’s 
a boat, it’s a hat. It’s fungible; the 
young child weaves a sort of magical 
aura around this saucepan, and it can 
become almost anything.”

Gradually, Amrine explained, the 

child sees its caretaker use a saucepan 
over and over and over again in the 
exact same way. Place it on the stove, 
let the flame blaze and serve up your 
creation. Eventually, the child is 

gradually induced into ditching the 
saucepan’s metamorphic potential 
and simply seeing the object for its 
practical function. 

Through 
a 
combination 
of 

psychological 
processes, 
social 

learning and cultural expectations, 
we slowly grow accustomed to what 
exactly it means to be a child; we 
learn where the line of “growing up” 
is drawn.

Through the process of social 

learning, we are conditioned into 
the confinements of our decided 
age group. As we move out of 
childhood (roughly ages 0-12) and 
into adolescence (roughly ages 
13-19), we learn what is deemed 
socially acceptable for our particular 
age range and are encouraged to 
act accordingly. And at one point or 
another, the majority of us are told 
to put down the Legos and crayons 
in search of more “mature” pursuits; 
rather, those that fit our perceived 
expectations for adulthood.

And growing into adolescence 

typically 
means 
developing 

an 
acutely 
controlling 
self-

consciousness. We start to notice 
what makes us feel different from 
others, whether it be our bodies, 

hobbies or our perceived social 
statuses. Our insecurities take center 
stage, leaving our imaginations to 
wait in the lobby, sell snacks during 
intermission and commiserate. 

Rather than continue to create 

worlds of our own, we become 
preoccupied with the one in front of 
us: namely, the social spheres under 
which we operate. The “imaginary 
audience,” defined as the adolescent 
belief that others are constantly 
focusing on them, pushes us to 
conform to the world around us to 
prevent embarrassment or shame. 

Hence 
why, 
according 
to 

Psychology Professor Daniel Keating, 
abandoning the liberal individuality 
of childhood is often inherent to the 
nature of adolescent insecurity. 

“(Adolescence) is a psychosocial 

thing. It’s what you’re thinking about 
yourself, and what others think of 
you,” Keating said in an interview 
with the Daily. “The adolescent peer 
experience, with all of its dominance 
hierarchies 
and 
struggles 
with 

popularity, sharpens what one would 
imagine one’s ideal self to be and 
what the world is going to accept.”

It’s a tale as old as time: a wide-

eyed child who loves to play make 
believe subconsciously transforms 
into a teen who would rather stay 
quiet in an unfamiliar circle of peers. 

Take 
Ohio 
State 
University 

freshman Talia Moses’s experience, 
for example: “[When I was little], I 
had notebooks on notebooks of plays 
and stories that I wrote. I was super 
into theater, which really allowed me 
to express myself,” she said. 

But coming into middle school, 

discomfort around her peers led her 
to abandon what had once been her 
primary creative outlet. 

“I think that as I got older, I 

thought I would get judged for being 
a theater kid or something like that,” 
Talia described. “And because of that 
I didn’t want to be associated with 
that or have people know what I was 
doing so I just let it go.” 

LSA sophomore Lilah Shandel 

shared a similar sentiment.

An avid reader and writer as 

a child, Lilah actively hid her 

imaginative side once she entered 
high school in an effort to better ‘fit’ 
into her social environment. 

“Honestly, when I was in middle 

school, my friends made fun of me a 
lot. Because I liked (books and that) 
kind of stuff. And in high school I 
saw a way to reinvent myself a little 
bit,” she said. “So I was like, ‘Oh, 
maybe I won’t be that girl who reads 
under her desk all the time when the 
teacher is teaching.’ I’m just gonna 
keep my head down and do what 
everyone else is doing. And maybe 
I’ll have friends that way.”

The adolescent experiences of 

Talia, Lilah and others like them 
are positioned in a society that sees 
imagination as something to grow 
out of. Beyond the more concrete 
neuroscience behind “growing up,” 
societal notions of what exactly being 
a child means impact our connection 
with the imaginations we were once 
closely in touch with. Through our 
experiences with others, we begin 
to internalize these expectations and 
allow our imaginations to fall to the 
backburner of our ever-busy minds. 

***

Working as a camp counselor 

for a group of 10-year-olds this past 
summer, I had the opportunity to 
watch “growing up” in action. For 
some, the age of 10 was just another 
year of experimental play and 
creativity. The “mature” 10-year-
olds might have crushes on the 
older boys and test out every curse 
word. Among lifeguards, counselors 
and head staff, the latter campers 
were the center of attention in 
conversation, showered with praise 
for their “adultlike” personalities. 
The former went unnoticed.

My campers were not alone in 

being encouraged to participate 
in the activity of “growing up:” 
becoming familiar with the “real 
world” and its consequences and 
complexities. 

Wanting to be an astronaut is a cute 

ambition when you’re in elementary 
school. Yet suddenly, 10 years later, 
you are being encouraged to use your 
scientific skills to go through medical 
school instead. It’s practical; it makes 

logical sense for establishing a stable 
income and daily life. Or, that’s what 
we’re told. 

***

Like Lilah and Talia, I, too, ditched 

my notebooks filled with bizarre 
short stories to engage with the ups 
and downs of middle school social 
life. Almost a decade later, exiting 
late adolescence and moving into 
young adulthood, I find myself 
yearning for the simplicity of my 
childhood, cursing my insecure 
middle school self for minimizing 
the magic with which I once saw the 
world. But slowly, I have discovered 
that imagination is not gone forever. 
Instead, it is lost — waiting to be 
found again. 

And life’s only a matter of how we 

go about finding it. 

Lilah, having gotten back in 

touch with her love for fantasy in 
college, explains that a supportive 
environment has provided her with 
the space to do so. 

“I was so lucky last year to meet 

the people that I met,” she said. “And 
people who really pushed me to do 
what I wanted to do and not what 
other people like, or what I thought 
other people wanted me to do.”

As a naturally exploratory life 

stage, young adulthood (roughly 
ages 18-25), provides us with the 
opportunity to find the communities 
that best serve our most authentic 
selves. Additionally, it gives us the 
space to engage with the ideas that 
intrigue and excite us, especially 
those we may have thrown to the 
wayside during a more uniformed 
adolescence. To Amrine, regaining 
our imagination is an active process, 
one to be taken on with love and 
patience. 

“The world is imaginative and (a) 

young child sort of imbibes that. But 
then the adult actually has to develop 
imagination from the inside out,” 
Amrine explained. “So they have to 
actually expand once faculties again 
and make them more mobile.”

Southern Macaroni and Cheese By Millie Peartree, Kiera Wright-Ruiz

Normalize 
cheesy first dates. 

University of Michigan students now have access to 

New York Times Cooking — which means your normal 
 

food routine just became anything but. 

Activate your 

free Cooking 

subscription.

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EMILY BLUMBERG
Statement Correspondent

Design by Grace Aretakis
Page Design by Sarah Chung

