I journey home, to the place I was born, to the place that kindled my imagination into being. The woods behind my childhood home are much thinner now, the wildness and beauty of nature gave way to the degradation of the material. Cookie-cutter dwellings, a road of echos, stood in place of all of the memories of my past. Where did they go? Now, that forest was trapped in the minds of those who lived it. The ones who grew there now only saw the remnants of grand adventures, the fading reflection of what used to fill the minds of the young.
I walked through that forest and saw splendid worlds, I fought vicious beasts, saved many damsels, and came home to the mundane world. What do the young do now? There are no trees to explore, no forts to build — that is, in the real world. I am surprised at how fast we neglected what was truly magical for a series of pixels on a screen. No longer did the kids in my old neighbourhood explore the depths of their imaginations in the woods behind their homes, for there were none. All that remained were boxes, and these boxes were devoid of imagination.
Beyond my neighborhood lay a path of entropic destruction. Rust snaked its way into all of my memories. As I passed areas I used to know as vibrant and new, they were replaced with grunge and rust. A subtle depression came over me as I saw the decay of my childhood right before my eyes. It was symbolic yet real. The wood slumped. The metal browned. The walls darkened with soot. The roads cracked. My memories were shattered.
All that I once knew was replaced by the grasp of entropy. Disorder had swept over my hometown like a plague. It was almost as if it had also deteriorated the souls of the very people who lived there. Is this how the world has fallen? Has all hope left the world of the living? Is the city itself dead?
How can those who exist in a dead city truly live? It was a sad sight and filled me with malaise. I felt empty there, as what used to fill my childhood soul had left this place. Where did it go? Why did it go? Did everyone forget the vibrancy of old?
Driving through my old school, I see that nothing had changed, save for the accumulation of disorder. I at once began to wonder, was this how it was all of those years ago? Do memories themselves save us from the reality of the past? Was I hallucinating a brighter, more noble world as a child? Is it the naivety that caused my memories to be so grand? No, it was not naivety, but imagination.
Perhaps my imagination is what now fails me. I’ve lived in many cities, seen much of the world, and rely less on the strength of my imagination. The more knowledge I attained, the less I imagined. It is almost as if imagination is the path to hope. Hope is the path to vibrancy. For how can something be bright and colourful without hope?
As I drove away from that static place, I realized that I must rekindle that long-forgotten imagination. How can I have hope in the future of the world if I cannot imagine it with that same childlike visualization? Age takes much away, but this may be the most detrimental loss. The leaves of our creativity fade with every year gained. We are left barren and at the mercy of the elements without the coverage of this canopy. We must retain the imagination of our youth, else we are promised to have a future of decay. For creativity is what occupies the gaps of entropy.
