The Grand Adventure of Imagining Who We Want to Be

If we aren’t 100% satisfied with the person we are today, we don’t need to despair because we are all works in progress—characters in our own make-believe game—trying to determine who we truly want to be.

I remember distinctly the day that I first met Audrey: a bright and inquisitive third grader who joined the after-school program organized by the Salvation Army in Bloomington, Indiana. I didn’t know much about her background other than the fact that the kids that were a part of this particular program typically came from rougher family situations and that she seemed to have a harder time warming up to people than other kids I had known.

But when she did warm up to people she went all out. That first day, I found her playing with plastic Pokémon figures, making up grand adventures for them to play all by herself in a corner in a large classroom while a couple dozen other kids played noisily around her. I sat down on the carpet next to her and asked her the names of the characters. She outlined for me the dozen or so characters’ names, a little bit about their back story, and their super powers. Before long, Audrey allowed me to enter her imaginary world where a particular flying Pokémon character had to continuously save the other characters from their terrible fates. Somehow or other the flying character saved the day every time. I was particularly proud when I was given the great honor of playing the flying hero and Audrey coached me on proper ways of leading the story along based on her far more superior knowledge of that character as well as all the other Pokémon characters.

This make believe activity filled a couple of hours until it was time for Audrey to go home. But on the subsequent days, Audrey insisted, to my delight, we continue where we left off the day before. Over the following weeks, we played out dozens of dynamic adventures ranging from cliff dives, to underwater sagas, to cloud kingdom rescues and beyond. Our conversations never veered too far off the game at hand, and we were both okay with that. It was amazing how liberating and recharging it was to be fully immersed in a different world, becoming a new character with powers new and fantastical.

Sadly, I ended my volunteer experience at the Salvation Army a couple of months later as I graduated with my masters and moved to Oregon. Audrey and I exchanged handwritten notes for a couple of months further, but without that face time and that make-believe to connect us, eventually I stopped hearing back from her. And though it makes me sad to lose my Pokémon friend, I still smile when I think about what she might be doing now 10 years later. I try to assume the very best. That she would be graduating from high school this year, with grand prospects for the future, and bright hopes and plans to use her amazing creativity to influence the world for better. And I try not to dwell too much on the statistics that would predict that her life trajectory might not be quite as rosy as my aspirations for her might be.

Something that has stuck with me even now a decade later, is the surprising power of imagination. I don’t believe that we ever really lose our imagination, but I do believe that if we don’t give it the attention that it deserves, it can go dormant to the point where we forget that it’s there. What is it about how instantly and uninhibitedly kids can jump into new worlds and assume new characters but as adults we struggle so much to even decide who we are as individuals let alone having fun playing rolls beyond our selves.

But maybe that pursuit of our unique identity is actually interwoven into those role-playing games the kids play. Perhaps those imaginary games are important not just for the sake of creativity but also a chance for kids to take on different roles. To metaphorically shed their skin and try on someone else’s attributes for a short term run to determine how it fits. Perhaps that is one way that we grow up to believing that some things are good and other things as bad.

Philosophers throughout the ages have posed questions about what true personal identity means and what it consists of and its origins. But in my life experience none of us are destined to fit into one pre-packaged personality or persona construct. But rather, we make it up as we go along based on the interactions that we have with others, the disappointments and triumphs that we experience, and the values that we discover to be of the greatest value and worth to us as individuals. This means that if we aren’t 100% satisfied with the person that we are today, we don’t need to despair because we are all works in progress—characters in our own make-believe game, trying to determine who we truly want to be.