Imagination deficit

I’ve enjoyed listening to Adam Gopnik read from his book, Through the Children’s Gate, written some years ago, after he and his young family returned to New York City from Paris - not too long before the horror of 911. The children are grown up now, but the author brings them to life in a way that is charming and revealing for as long as readers continue to meet them.

At age three, his daughter Olivia developed accounts of her interesting imaginary friend named Charlie Ravioli. The parents listened to long telephone calls on a toy phone that somehow revealed the patterns of their own New York lives. Charlie was usually too busy to play or grab lunch. He was constantly in meetings. Eventually Olivia had to try to connect with Charlie through an administrative assistant - something of an anomaly in the world of imaginary friends. One day there was a surprising report that Charlie had been married - to a woman with an exotic name, that made her sound like an African princess. And even more surprising sometime later, there was a report that the wife had died. What did she die of, the parents asked. The answer was Bitteroscity.

Gopnik goes on to say how Bitteroscity afflicts us all - resentment, disappointment, jealousy, A good word indeed. How will we escape it? Probably the answer is Olivia’s. When we are three, we can imagine a really interesting world and pick and choose elements of the real one to create something totally new. When we’re decades beyond three, we lose our ability to imagine something better in the real one. We spend most of our time on the screens and social media of a digital one.

The next time you go to Twitter or Facebook, check out how you really feel as you exit - more imaginative, more inspired, ready to think of something to create a better future - or more envious, more exhausted, more jealous, more depressed, My guess is that Bitteroscity has more likely hit home. There’s a remedy for that. We all know what it is.