Hi Everyone!
It’s Zoe Becker coming to you live from DC (certainly an interesting place to be right now) with this week’s Epistle! Weekly Epistles are generally written by Director of Teen Programs, Lena Roy, for those of us who are part of the year-long pre-college Creative Portfolio Program but I’ve wanted to contribute a guest Epistle forever so I am very appreciative of Lena just giving me free reign, haha.
One concept I wanted to focus on that’s been on my mind a lot lately is imagination. I’ve been thinking about it in two main contexts.
First, in the context of writing. Its application here is self explanatory–we need our imaginations to write (no matter whether you’re writing fiction, non-fiction, or a hybrid). While that sounds pretty obvious, it’s been something I’ve had to make an intentional effort to remind myself of, lately. As Junior year relentlessly goes on, it’s really easy to fall into a bit of a doom spiral about school, college, life, and so on and so forth. For me, that spiral has targeted writing specifically. I dread opening my laptop and spend outsized amounts of time just focused on tailoring my work to a specific contest or summer program. It is exhausting and demoralizing. And while there’s certainly a time and place for chasing prestige, a recent conversation with my mom reminded me why I started writing as a little kid in the first place. I did not start writing to win contests or arbitrarily earn a spot on a college campus the summer after Junior year. I started writing because I love it. I love the freedom to come up with any story in the world and then make it come alive. I love being allowed to just imagine. So, if you too are in the Junior year (or Freshman, Sophomore, or Senior, for that matter) rut, my first piece of advice would just be to return to imagination.
Imagination as a concept, though, is much more broadly applicable. Like I mentioned, it’s a weird time to be in DC right now. And I’m not going to beat around the bush here. I will say with my full chest that what is happening in the West Wing is terrifying. Just today, the White House threatened the fate of the Kennedy Center which I have treasured for years (and which has had an indelible impact on my artistic upbringing). Doom is not the answer though. I’m not saying this to be cheesy. I’m saying this from a pragmatist’s point of view, actually. There’s some fascinating research about how overexposure to so-called “disaster news” can literally wear down our adrenal glands and fray our nervous system such that we become increasingly depressed and apathetic. The most immediate solution though, the one that we really all have access to, is political and social imagination. Political and social imagination are academic terms that describe exactly what they sound like: the ability to understand our reality and conceive of new ones. If we can focus our energy on imagining a better future rather than a catastrophic one, that is progress.
So much love,
Zoe Becker
Senior Officer, Writopia Lab Youth Advisory Board