Living Neverland

When I was a kid, I loved it. Playing in the yard, building forts in the woods, playing army, power rangers, pirates, and batman. Today it seems as if we have so much media that we don’t have to stimulate our imagination anymore, but simply let everything else be it for us. It’s like we lose the desire to create in that the opportunity itself is robbed from us by our experiences with music, movies, tv, art, etc.
What is it that drives a man to become an adult? Sure there are times when you are a kid and you desire to become older only for the fact of being able to date, or drive, or stay out late. But I distinctly remember those years that it became a wrestle within my own existence. I wanted to become older so I could do these things, and the fact was I had begun to actually be older, and I was able to do some of those things. But the great boy within me fought it…Speaking of movies, it’s like in Hook when Robin Williams (Peter) is in Neverland again, there again in all his previous glory of his youth, but realizes he must go back home, he must continue being an adult, and he will never be able to go back to Neverland again. That is the way I felt inside. I didn’t want to grow up, but I wanted to. Even worse, it seemed I had no choice in the matter. I was growing up. Responsibilities forced me, peers pulled me, and love drove me. So with some tears I watched as my blissful youth began to fade away… The hours on end in the woods and around the yard, the make-believe office under the stairs, the day adventures of countless action figures, the imagination.
You see when you’re a kid your imagination is more than just what you think up, but it is what you act out. You never imaged fighting ninjas or pirates when you were a kid and just sat there on the couch…. What did you do? You jumped up, grabbed the nearest umbrella you could find and began fighting these villains off. You didn’t just watch power rangers and say that was cool, but when it was over you ran outside and began attempting cartwheels in the back yard. You thought if a kid and an alien could fly on a bicycle you and your dog should be able to as-well! A child with an imagination is a person on an active adventure journeying through the endless unknowns of an ever discovering mind.
But it’s like we’ve become adults, and somehow we have come to believe that that means no longer acting on our imaginations. Sure, perhaps we don’t dream about fighting ninjas anymore (or at least that often), but we do dream, we still have imagination.
Somewhere along the line we listened to some voice that told us it was no longer correct and proper to play with crayons, to mush playdoe together and then run it under water just to see what might happen. Somewhere along the line we developed this sense of what is right and what is wrong in society and since then we have been tamed lions. We no longer pounce but simply sleep. “The hyenas have taken over the pride land,” as one might say.
So what do we do? We grow up. Get jobs that we are decently satisfied with, that at least allow us to make an ok income. Some of us get married, which may become the last notion of dreams coming true that we have. Then we settle. We eat, sleep, work, live, love, and die. Somewhere about age 14 our imaginations gave way to new and better ways to live. Or so we think.
One of my favorite parts about the movie Hook is at the end of the movie when Peter gets back with his children from Neverland Peter gives a certain old man by the name of Tootles his marbles back which he had lost. But these aren’t just any marbles, it was Tootles happy thought, and the last image we see is this 70 year old dude flying around sky scrappers.
Pretty Cool.
My grandfather was probably the coolest older man in the world. He was a salesman and he went around in his brown ford van selling a little bit of everything you could think of to little country stores in middle Tennessee. Often I went with him on his daily routes. By the time I was 14 or so I probably new more about what he did than anyone else. I would help him with different things, organize his merchandise, price his cakes, and on and on. I grew up living off of Little Debbie cakes that he had to pick up after the dates were up. But we knew that they were still good for a long time after that! Anytime there was a torn package or broken toy he always gave it to me to have, to fix, or to play with. I was homeschooled so I had quite a bit of freedom as to where I did my work. So, for years I spent days and hours on end in the passenger seat of that brown ford van doing my homework and riding all over Tennessee. When we got home in the afternoons we would watch cartoons together or the Braves if they were on. Then perhaps later we would both go outside. He would work on his van or the yard and I would be off to another adventure. For me those years with Pop were Neverland, and I never wanted them to end.
But they did.
Years later I went off to college. Four of the best years of my life. I wouldn’t trade my experiences at Trevecca for anything. So many good times, good friends and relationships, and a great deal learned.
Over the past year or so I have really been beginning to learn what it means to live in Neverland. You see when Peter (Robin Williams) came back from Neverland for the last time he didn’t just settle back into the old routine, but things were changed now, he was different. His attitude, his character, his life, and the way he loved. I think Peter realized that Neverland was in his heart. He realized you don’t have to take the stairs anymore but you can climb the gutter, you don’t have to take the call anymore but you can throw the phone out the window, and Tootles realized you don’t have to wait around anymore but you can fly.
Neverland is Now.
Right now I am living in Germany, and as much as I would like to be home sometimes, there with my fiancé, there with my family, etc. I look out the window and know that I will miss all this when I am gone from here. I must let my imagination run while I’m here; I must enjoy this Neverland here in Germany while I have it. Because tomorrow it’s gone. We are all running from time in a way aren’t we?...As the old Crocodile slithers toward us. .. Then tomorrow will be a new day I must enjoy.
It is so easy to judge those who live by the seat of their imagination. But we crave it.
We thirst to live once again in Neverland, to dance in the living room, to scarf down Little Debbie cakes without a care, to jump off the couch and kick an invisible ninja across the room, to create our own rocket ship out of sheets and pillows and fly to the moon, we long to imagine! Too bad we have almost forgotten how.
I think in life, the people who are most fulfilled, the ones who make the world a better place, the ones who dance, the ones who transform society, the ones who invent, the ones who lead, the ones who live, are the ones who act on the dreams of their imagination.
Dream.