Always the beach – Summer = Beach, waves, water, sun…
And Mom’s garden, always lovely and peaceful,
And people having a good time, a celebration, a weekend, a vacation…
and the poppies in Wolfeboro, our summer retreat…
Family trips to the zoo…
flowers everywhere…
and the beach, again, always, Summer = Beach
A bored person (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Quite frankly you know, sometimes I just get bored, dreadfully bored doing mundane day to day tasks that never change. I get bored living in the same place, driving down the same streets and shopping at the same stores. I get bored at work and even surfing the internet. Is boredom an inevitable part of aging?
When my kids were little I would not put up with cries of boredom. I would tell them, “If you’re bored it’s just because you’re not using your imagination.” I would also say, “You’ve got a brain so use it, make stuff up and play.” In a happy childhood part of every day is created through imaginative play. It’s our imagination about what we might be when we grow up, where we might go and adventures we might have that motivate us to learn and be open to new experiences. We explore all kinds of possibilities, and impossibilities, through imagination.
Somehow along the way to becoming an adult someone says, “get real, stop daydreaming.” Little by little we learn to fit in to the mundane processes of life, doing our part whatever that might be. At first it might be interesting and stimulating as long as we’re learning new things or meeting new people, but eventually if we have stopped imagining the possibilities, life will get boring.
Imagination! (Photo credit: Stephh922)
So I guess it’s time to take my own advise to use my imagination, make stuff up and play. Every man made thing that exists came from someone’s imagination, combined with willpower and skill to bring the idea into reality. Every novel I’ve read and movie I’ve seen came from someone’s imagination. Without dreams and ideas, probing into possibilities, we simply become stagnant. I like to keep moving, stay open, be creative, and imagine what else is possible.
I am asking myself, “how can I make this day different, new and exciting; where will my imagination take me today, or what can I create with my infinite mind?”
So many ways one can indulge! One of my favorite ways to indulge is by spending the night in a fancy hotel room.
As a matter of fact, I think I could live quite nicely in a room like this. These beds were so soft and comfy. Actually, I have been in nicer suites, but these were the best beds ever.
It is an indulgence though, not something I can afford to do often. Unless of course, someone would like to give me a job where I needed to travel a lot and stay in such nice places. That would be the perfect job for me: travel, stay at the best hotels, have an expense account, and do some kind of valuable or relevant work. Hmmmm…..anyone have any ideas?
We made creative use of whatever we could find to play with, even our environment. A hill could be a mountain or a dinosaur, and a stream could be a river or a moat. Our bikes could be magic carpets and our arms could be wings. Whatever our imaginations could dream up, we would live happily in that world for a time.
I remember early one morning our grandfather took my brother and I fishing with him on the inter-coastal waterway in Ft. Lauderdale, FL. We were next to a high bridge that crossed the river, sitting on a cement sea wall as we watched him prepare the bait. I was probably about 5 and my brother was 21/2 years older. He may have been interested in learning to put bait on a hook but I clearly was not.
I began to walk on the sea wall and hop, skip & jump around the area where our car was parked. My grandfather, presumably worried, told my brother to go and look after me. We ran up & down the hill that was the side of the road leading up to the bridge. We chased each other around the cars and over to a nearby building, probably playing cops & robbers.
Then my brother found a some large pieces of cardboard near a dumpster. Our grandfather called at us to come back closer to him, so we grabbed some cardboard and ran back over to the hill. We were used to making forts with cardboard boxes because my father owned a furniture store and we often played behind the building.
These boxes were not quite big enough to build a fort, so we made a tunnel. While crawling through we began to slip & slide as we were on a grass covered slope. My brother thought that was even more fun, so he flattened a box and ran to the top of the hill, flopped belly down on the cardboard and went head first down the hill as if riding a sled. He was smart enough to roll off as he neared the bottom.
Naturally I followed his lead, but decided to sit feet first, as I was a lady & wearing a dress. “Push me, push me”, I screamed. But instead he ran up and jumped on behind me and we both went grass sledding down the hill. We continued like this for as long as our grandfather was fishing or until we totally wore ourselves out and it was time to go.
From that time on we often asked our parents to let us go fishing with grandpa, or for them to take us grass sledding instead. I think they did a couple times, but then someone put up signs saying “Keep Off The Grass”. Too bad they spoiled our fun, those bureaucrats!
Why do we grow up I sometimes wonder? Do we have to lose our creativity & imagination to become adults? Is it just that we lose that dynamic energy of youth, or is all this reality really draining us and pulling us down? Down a slippery slope of a different kind, and we become afraid to run back up the hill.
Fortunately, if we keep that spark of childhood memory alive, we can extend our
creative mischief through our own children, and grandchildren too. I was so fortunate to be able to pass this lovely memory on to my own children one summer. After my parents had cleared the back lot of their summer cottage grass began to grow on the steep slope behind the house. One weekend while we visited my children discovered how much fun the lovely long grass on the hillside could be. Not having any boxes, mom provided them with paper shopping bags with handles. We both enjoyed reliving this memory as we watched my children learn to grass sled.
One evening last summer I went to the beach with my camera looking for some unusual scenery. I hadn’t been to the beach for a long time. We don’t have a lot of beach in NH and since I’m from Florida originally, and have traveled to more exotic beaches as well, the beach here has never been a big attraction for me.
The water was calm and it was a weekday so it was not extremely crowded. After walking for awhile I came to the bandstand and was so surprised to see lots of people dancing. It was such an inspiration to see people of all ages just dancing & having fun together. It created such a beautiful atmosphere at the beach, as if we were all one family and nothing was bad in the world.
