Imagination & Identity Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Imagination & Identity - Essay Example From the time that one is young, there is a perception and specific reality that is created in terms of identity. Imaginary worlds and friends are some of the main concepts that are applied to this and which create a specific sense of what it means to belong to a specific identity or group. â€Å"Most under – sevens have an invisible friend, and children create their imaginary playmates not out of trauma but out of a serene sense of the possibilities of fiction – sometimes as figures of pure fantasy, sometimes, as observations of grownup manners† (Gopnik, 253). The ability to create an identity and sense of reality through imagination and by mimicking the identity of others is one which can then be expected to stay with children while growing older. This reality and vision is one which is combined not only with ideas of fiction but also with expectations of what one is to become. â€Å"We were always about becoming, not being, about the prospects for the future, not about the inheritance of the past† (Lapham, 45). Both of these articles agree that there is the need to create something from the imagination and to keep depicting that specific reality. The fiction then becomes a sense of identity that one grows into, either by imagining something, mimicking adult behaviors or by believing what one should be. The concept of building a reality out of imagination then leads into the capacity of creating identity. The creation of identity moves beyond the labels in which one holds, such as being a New Yorker or a scientist. More important, are behaviors and mannerisms that are associated with the identity and labels which one believes they have. For instance, when defining New Yorkers, the identity becomes: â€Å"New Yorkers are busy for obvious reasons: they have husbands and wives and careers and children they have the Gauguin show to see and their personal trainers and