Swimming Pools Change When We Grow Up
On bettering imagination and creation
When I was a child, I loved swimming in pools—especially those with the children-section integrated with the adults. I liked to think that I belonged to the water.
I always wore my hair loose because I loved feeling my hair roots shifting as my head swayed with the water. I always dived deep until my belly grazed the floor and felt so comfortable when the water swept the skin all over my body. I loved wearing my goggles so that I could see the water clearly, pretending to be a sea creature. Ironically enough, my child’s eyes did not see the blue-tiled pool in the water my goggles allowed me to.
Instead, I saw corals, evil water, journeys, friends, my sleeping place, and the list goes on. I feel like sorting those activities was based on the tones of the blue tiles, but I’m not sure. It’s just a feeling. I would think I made the evil happen at the deeper end of the adult pool where the dark blue tiles were, and my’ home’ at the shallower part of the pool with light blue tiles.
My friends invited me to swim in the pools at their condos that had different flooring textures and colors that created unique places where I was free to imagine new stories when I swam underwater.
Being small helped because everything seemed to get magnified. The water felt big. But why I really went underwater was the narrative I created for myself. It was a different storyline each time I went to play — a make-believe underwater world.
During the monsoons, it usually only rained in the afternoon. So I would count the hours and beg my mum to take me swimming in the morning. Swimming in the sunlight meant that straight rays of light would come through the water that struck the bottom of the pool. When I swam through them, that was beautiful to me.
Thinking back on it now, I’m surprised at how I managed to play in the same pool all the time without getting bored.
Somewhere along the lines of growing up, I was told by the world to take things more seriously. That included swimming.
I took lessons twice a week, swimming and timing laps.
In the capitalist nature of learning, I filtered everything unimportant to reach my goals of becoming a better swimmer, including my playtime. Soon, my relationship with swimming pools became chequered floors racing before my eyes as I held my breath and paddled as consistently as I could.
My vision underwater now is literal. Unimaginative.
All I see is the tiled pool. No matter how hard I try, I can’t imagine the place that made me feel as fabulous as before. The water brushing my skin has lost its magical touch. Now I’m just relieved that the water rinses my sticky sweat away.
On the bright side, my body still remembers how amazing it is to swim in the warm rays of sunlight coming through the water.
That’s the only inner child part left in me.
Why is it important to keep your inner child alive?
I journal these memories because I realized that my childhood curiosity is my true self, but I sometimes feel embarrassed to embrace it. Guilty pleasures are about as close as an adult gets to the carefree life they experienced as a child.
I think the things which make us happy touch the core of our inner child. I think we respond best to the simple stuff masked by complexity.
The more we grow, the more we forget. We have responsibilities.
But the most important thing I’ve learned is always to reflect, dig and remember the simple core message which made a piece effective. The core principle of something is what you can build around. What is the simplest inner child message?
The world is changing faster than ever. From my experiences, how much a core principle genuinely touches people doesn’t change. This, I believe, comes from the child’s fearless freedom to imagine.
To keep up, the key to it is the child-like curious mind that helps enhance the core child emotion everyone wants to feel.
The difference between remembering and recreating your inner child
I was an architecture student years ago, and my wildest projects were the best. I’m now envious of those successes and, at the same time, scared of them. Maybe that’s because I lost the freedom I will never again achieve.
Sometimes I believed that the artist behind it was just trying to sell a wild idea. Because most of the time, the artist seemed to stray far away from reality.
One day, I sat beside a frustrated girl in the studio. She was letting it out on her friend while I was doing my work.
I clearly remember her venting that she didn’t care about the project. She just wanted to make really impressive aesthetic drawings. Her friend responded by telling her she was in the wrong class if her goal was to have those wild aesthetic drawings.
Whether her friend was just being polite or not, they were not loyal to their craft in-the-moment.
That interaction proved that I wasn’t the only one under pressure to produce intellectual projects.
People can desperately try to recreate instead of remembering why they chose to create in the first place. It pains me to think that we were under so much pressure to compete that it just made us unhappy, just like how my imagination changed my swimming experiences.
Rather than hide in someone’s successful shadow and recreate what they experience, it takes creativity for a person to be happy and free to see how their unique solutions result from absorbing good energy and inspiration from others.
How to keep your inner child alive
If you can maintain your freedom of imagination like my swimming pool imagination, it will be easier for you because you will be in the mindset that anything is possible. When you believe it, you’ll be surprised to see how original you can be in solving problems or even creating something new.
You’ll be new and original by providing one-of-a-kind works from your heart. That’s one big part of a battle won.
To keep that part of yourself alive, I believe the most helpful way is to come into a habit of listening to your intuition and desires, then asking ‘why.’ You’ll train your mind to be curious and open like that of a child. Accepting that everything can be challenged will show that you don’t know everything. Be original and imaginative with your answers.
Of course, being free to imagine solutions must come with reasonable backing.
A beautiful example:
Bruno Munari’s descriptions of nature in his book Design as Art capture a manifestation of a ‘why’ product-
Of leaves being beautiful ‘not because it is stylish but because it is natural, created in its exact form by its exact function’; and of bamboo appearing with ‘knuckled rings’ as it corresponds to its ‘inner blockages,’ marking the pulses of the plant’s growth.
A thing is beautiful because it is not forced.
A thing is beautiful because it makes sense.
However, good backing shouldn’t mean that you should constantly be stopped from imagining a creative solution.
If your freedom of intuition is telling you something, question why is it you felt that way. There has to be a reason why you felt that way. If you can back it up, you’d have a product that shows your most raw and honest feelings, which will probably connect with others, and have it backed up to show that it works.
Final thoughts
Mental blockage is exhausting.
I am at the point where I no longer want to block myself from what I want because it will displease others or make them snicker. I’m ready to be happy in my solitude.
I hope you can find your own space to be free in your imagination. It will make you a better creative, and it will bring you happiness.
