Void of Electronics, We Had Our Imaginations

I tend to obsess over our “obsession” with electronics as 2024 unfolds, but it is surely true we have a problem with our love affair with electronics in the new year. We just can’t put down our cell phones, tablets, and personal computers. 

I speak from experience as I sit at a PC writing this missive. 

I am obsessed too. 

Because I am a writer, I spend a lot of time at a personal computer hammering out words that hopefully mean something. There are also plenty of hours spent in Facebook, eBay, Amazon, YouTube (a personal favorite) and streaming networks. 

I treasure the vintage footage I find in YouTube. 

Though endlessly entertaining, this is not healthy. When you’re staring at a cell phone, laptop, tablet, or PC, you are missing out on life. You are missing the dance. In routine conversation, we ask what on Earth did we do before cell phones and computers? What kept us preoccupied?  

We used our imaginations. 

That’s how we escaped. We pretended. I’d fly model airplanes around my bedroom and pretend to be a passenger or pilot flying to a destination. I’d lay out a city on a plywood board and drive Matchbox diecast cars around them. I loved playing with LEGOs. I built balsa wood homes on a card table using whatever I could find. I took long journeys in my mind. 

I’d run down to the garage and don my SEARS bicycle clad in red. I added accessories and pretended my bike was a car. Because I loved bowling, I wanted to build a bowling alley. I wanted a huge-long basement with enough room to build a pair of bowling lanes complete with automatic pinsetters.

I could not wait to grow up and buy my own home because I loved architecture. I loved home improvement. I dreamed of buying an old home and renovating it into the home of my dreams – my imagination. I fantasized about hitting the open road in my first car and going wherever the pavement took me. 

What seems to have been lost in recent decades has been fresh ideas as a result of not using our imaginations. A lot of what Hollywood seems to be bringing us these days are redo’s of old sitcoms and movies instead of fresh approaches. The same can be said for commercials. They lack to say the least. They lack imagination – inspiration.

We have the creative tools necessary to create incredible images and storylines. We just aren’t using our imaginations. Think of television of the 1950s and sixties where imagination ran amuck. ”Mister Ed,” “I Dream of Jeanie,” “Bewitched,” “Time Tunnel,” “Lost In Space,” “Star Trek,” “I Love Lucy,” “Dick Van Dyke,” “Andy Griffth,” and a host of others. 

Each of these time proven creations have endured the times – so loved by the masses across the generations. My teenage son, born in 2008, will sit there and laugh with us taking in an episode of “The Flintstones” or “Andy Griffith.” It was all about raw productive imagination that came of just doing nothing. It worked.

Have you just sat and used your imagination lately?