"Your daughter has such a vivid imagination".
I can't count the number of times my mother heard that from the teachers
at my lower-school’s parents’ evening. As a 6-year-old, I wasn’t
very engaged or interested in this world and much preferred crafting my own to assuming
the less exotic and more confusing realities of home and school life.
Call me egocentric but ... I liked to play God. The laws of the universe
I lived in were conceived, passed and
implemented by me. It had its own
languages, social hierarchy and defects. It was a totally illogical place and yet
one where anything could happen or even exist; completely baffling to outsiders
trying to glimpse its workings or reason for being, but it made perfect sense
to me.
As I grew older, frowns of incomprehension and discomfort became
the most frequent reactions to any attempt to share my secret world with even
the most curious of outsiders and, slowly but surely, fears and doubts clumped
together in my mind to form cobweb upon cobweb of sticky gloop, clogging up the
flow of creative juices and catapulting my focus to the forefront of the
so-called “real world”.
School examinations crept up behind me and tapped me on the
shoulder with menacing grins, conflicts at home snatched up my new ideas only to
throw my energies on the fire like a jealous sibling, job prospects for recent university
graduates held out sympathetic hands to hold and to follow, in the hope that my
education and upbringing had taught me well, that I might succumb to the sickly
sweet stench of disloyalty to oneself, that I might forget about my secret
world forever.
At times it may feel as if the blood, sweat and tears of following
your dream aren’t worth their salt. The truth is, they’re worth every drop.
Not to impress an audience. For you. Just for you.
If you have a creative mind but no voice to express it through,
give yourself time to explore your genuine strengths and interests, ask
yourself questions and honour this knowledge by living your truths.
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