Our generation is one that makes me shiver and cringe and one that makes me smile and applaud. Our entire lives we have been told, “We are the future,” but now what?
The future is here and I have no idea what I am doing. We are growing older and a lot of my friends and I are about to enter our “roaring twenties” decade, where we live life to the fullest, make our best memories, and transition into full-on adulthood.
While that all sounds quite nice and normal, I can’t help but find it remarkably mundane. Remember when we were told we could be anything we wanted to be and the books and movies we consumed just endorsed that?
I think fear has made me opt out of following my wildest dreams. No, life is not like a movie, no we do not live in a post-apocalyptic world with zombies, factions, or districts. There are no underground worlds (that we know about) and time machine DeLorean’s are not real.
But wouldn’t it be so much better if these things were real? Well, most of them…I could do without the zombies. I’m not hating on what is real and pure and genuine in the world we live in, I just think sometimes we lack the excitement and possibility we had as kids.
Over Thanksgiving break I babysat for two little girls. We played a game where we had to name what we’d want our superhero power to be. I said “invisibility,” and the 6-year-old said something along the lines of, “I want to fart rainbows so I can blast off to the sky.”
When did we stop thinking like that? Don’t you miss that? Don’t you miss living in this fantasy world where anything could happen and you could be whatever you wanted? Kids’ imaginations are so unlimited and free, they have different levels of creativity than adults do.
Granted, we do need our thoughts to mature and our minds to be molded along the way, but, still, how hilarious is that? We’re growing up, and that’s completely okay, but we shouldn’t ever stop being young.
I think as we grow up, we get a better handle on reality and what we’re supposed to do and who we’re supposed to be. But the closer we get to that, the better fantasy sounds.
This is probably why there are such cult followings for certain movies and TV shows. People want to be a part of and experience them. Book fandoms are huge, and there is one for basically every series.
Why are theme parks built and comic cons so impossible to get tickets for? They let us step out of real life.
I think fantasy is so important and relevant because it takes us out of reality and transports us to someplace unimaginable and sometimes better than the places we are in. I think it’s so important because it gives us characters to look up to and learn from in an out-of-thebox context.
Never stop seeing the unbelievable, unreal, and unattainable possibilities of a fantastical world. If you don’t, life is quite dull. Reality— while necessary—should not be what you settle on. Don’t ever stop reaching for that fantasy.
