LEGO

When I was about 5 years old, I got my first Lego set. I absolutely loved them and collected them all the way up until my late teens when I moved out of my parents’ house. I didn’t really outgrow them, I just outgrew having the sort of life where it was feasible to own an enormous tub of plastic bits like that. So I gave them to some younger cousins (who were also probably around 5) so they’d have the joy I did.

By all accounts, they did have that joy – and added to it as well as the collection grew. Years go by, and my own kids have now been bitten by the Lego bug. They have a small collection and I add to it whenever they’ve done some particular thing worthy of reward. I mentioned this to the family, and get this – my aunt still has the giant collection I had gifted her sons!

They’re grown now, of course, and were more than happy to bequeath this hoard back to my household, returned after all these years to be enjoyed anew. My kids went berserk when they saw the haul. (I should have waited until Christmas; I could have given them nothing else and they’d have been thrilled.)

It was so fun to tumble back into a very specific kind of enormously enjoyable brain activity with my children, who were clearly experiencing exactly what I was. There’s just something about the ability to dump your imagination onto the floor in physical form, and then reshape it with your hands and eyes and a different part of your brain until it’s taken on a new life, and then let it back into your imagination in a wholly new way.

In many ways, it’s why I think digital creation tools are so wonderful for fostering artistic expression – it’s not the ease of use, per se. It’s the ease of unmaking, the infinitely resettable nature that frees you from all consequences of trying out new ideas over and over. You never waste anything – no clay is lost, no canvas ruined. No matter what you want to try, freedom.

Those opportunities aren’t everywhere, but they do exist. When you have that kind of freedom, trust me. Put your arms deep into that bucket, grab two handfuls of whatever you find, and go berserk.