What I’ll Teach My Son: Vol. I – Imagination
One of the lessons that took me the longest to learn in my life is how to live an imagination-driven life. For the first 23 years of my life, I mostly fell victim to the fears instilled by a black middle-class upbringing; get an education, pick a stable major and find a job with benefits.
As a kid, I was always imaging to be something more than what I was; not that I was unhappy with my family or my life, but I always felt the need to pursue more, to do something that I had no business even dreaming about. And that path of safety and anonymity almost worked out for me; I grew up, graduated from college, got a state job with a good title and worked with great people. But the common theme that governed my discontent throughout life become more pronounced in adulthood than it was in childhood.
And after I got married, the feeling morphed from a tug and whisper to a slap and all-out shout. My life needed to defined by more than domestic and professional ethics. I needed to find a higher purpose.
Lo and behold, blogging was the outlet. And two years into a semi-professional career as a blogger, it is this example that sets the curriculum for my first lesson to my son:
Allow your life to be determined by your imagination, not expectations.
Nothing is a freeing as allowing room for your dreams to meld with reality. I still work a job, get benefits and make sure my family members eat and have a roof over their heads. I’m not dissociated from what life and family responsibility entails, but my dreams of being a writer are thoroughly interwoven within these responsibilities.
I write in my free time. My wife supports and encourages the craft at any an all moments when inspiration hits. Even in the infant stages of this burgeoning career in social media literature, I feel empowered and capable of making my dream of leveraging a passion into a lucrative and rewarding career.
And that’s what I want June to know. That whether he pursues a dream in the arts, sciences, athletics or politics, nothing should interfere with that pursuit. Not education, not family requirements, not religious supplications. He, like I, has a specific purpose that his life must bring to bear. And if I can develop a love and fervor for that purpose by encouraging and feeding his imagination, I hope that it will be an effective tool in leveraging his happiness and worth to his family.
