Sometimes, I wish I were 9 or 10 years old again. At that time, my family was living in the town of Groves, a somewhat rural community encompassed inside Port Arthur just south of Beaumont, Texas. It wasn’t an exceptionally small town but small enough for you to know a lot of people around town.
I feel like I lived the best years of my childhood in that town. I had lots of school friends, plenty of church friends, and some close neighborhood friends. Across the street from our house lived probably some of my closest friends Chris and Ben. Chris is two years younger than me and Ben is about four years younger. Despite our age differences, I would almost always go over there to play with them when I wasn’t at school or scout meetings or any of the other many activities in which I was involved.
Chris and I were always looking for an excuse to play make believe. Some of our favorite little imaginative characters to play were Robocop and Supercop. I made up Supercop because Robocop was already so cool that he needed a sidekick that sounded just as cool. Once we gathered our guns and equipment, we’d go out on our adventure through his yard or my yard looking for bad guys. And I mean, we’d be playing die hard like there were villians all over the place. Shooting them, having to help each other get past some difficulties, strategizing ways to victory.
Our homebase was usually located in this one tree in the front of his yard to the right side of the driveway. I absolutely loved climbing that tree because it was so easy to get up there. Once we fought our way to homebase, we could recharge and get back out there to save the day.
I can vividly remember imaginging and creating our missions and with someone of them, we actually followed everything threw and beat the bad guys from beginning to end. I would often bring over some of my toys to supplement whatever toys Chris used. These adventures were sorta like a make believe video game that we both played in our head. We ran around the grass, jumped over the fenses, crouched up against the side of the house, shot our guns at the enemies, used rope to help each other out of traps, just about anything of which you can think.
I sometimes miss, sometimes reminisce about those days because I believe I was at my peak in terms of a creative imagination. I really let it run freely and often during those times because it was so much fun to be pretending to be someone else with those powers. I knew that I could accomplish whatever I wanted to because I could imagine it. There were no boundaries too far, no obstacles too demanding, nothing standing in my way.
Sometimes it’s difficult to realize that today I can make anything happen just by imagining it. I have so many boundaries that seem to be impossible to cross. There are many more obstacles standing in my way that I cannot get past. It seems so often like life is standing in my way. But maybe a lot of these things are in my mind?
I think it’s important to share that certain times can be rough because it shows how human we all are. This phase of my life is a huge transition, sometimes sorta difficult, because I’m trying to figure out how to accomplish my goals and dreams and continue to be happy at the same time. I am not certain how long this transition will last but I hope that sometime in the near future I can figure things out.
I guess in some aspect, this is my personal pursuit for the meaning of life. The meaning of my personal life, not everyone’s life. The meaning of life, in my opinion, is so subjective. Whatever is meaningful to me isn’t necessarily meaningful to others. If I could recapture that imaginative spirit I once had, retool it for my life today, I believe life could really begin to pick up. I’m not necessarily in a funk or stalemate; I think I’m just trying to create a outlet for a new meaning, a new spirit that will carry me through this next phase of life. I can only hope that when I reach that time in my life where I’ve got more figured out that I haven’t passed other great opportunities by. And I hope that I will eventually learn how to recapture that imaginative spirit I had when I was 10 years old.