Childhood imagination

In my childhood, I had a very cartoon like view of the world. I saw reality in a very simplistic way. Most people consider this stage to be a passing phase and will tell you grow up, become mature, understand reality and other such things. Along with those comments they would also include 'Enjoy this childhood phase while it lasts'. Underlying all these comments is the opinion that child like thinking is inferior to what an adult might think.

In my opinion however, childhood is a magical phase and is no way inferior to the way an adult perceives the world. The consciousness is the same but the experience is still so radically different, just like how you are the same person during deep sleep, dreaming and while awake. These states from the surface seem completely disconnected, but they are all connected at a higher plane.

In creative professions like designing things first start of with very rough and ambiguous sketch. You might question, if the person is so good at drawing, why should he draw a sketch that is devoid of details and why should it look rough and ambiguous? Isn't that a quality of a non artistic person? The idea of drawing a rough sketch is to explore the breadth of ideas and to stimulate imagination. If the drawing is concrete and embellished with shading and color, it is very difficult to explore ideas using that as a base. Such a drawing would be a prototype and not a sketch. A Prototype is generally used towards the end of the design phase after narrowing down all the ideas. The rough nature of the sketch stokes our imagination and we try to fill in all the holes. A child;s view of the world is similar to the rough sketch. There are so many holes to fill. The child fills in the gaps using his/her imagination and this is not limited to the plethora of constraints the real world poses: social, ecological, anthropological and psychological. So in essence all of us have passed through this magical period where we begin to conceptualize the world and we actively use our imagination. In adulthood, the view of the world resembles more of the prototype stage. Your imagination no longer functions as vividly and freely as before since you are aware of a whole new HUGE set of constraints and most options get dismissed right at the start. It should be noted though, that most of the creative geniuses like inventors and artists did find a way to access this free association state and that is what lead to all the extraordinary work and groundbreaking inventions.