Recently, I was walking outside and listening to my favorite “happy music” playlist. I came upon a row of maple trees dropping their helicopter-like seed pods in piles all over the ground. I was suddenly catapulted back to my childhood. Where I grew up in New Jersey, there were not many trees but I remember there was this one huge maple. I loved when the sky was full of helicopters falling earthbound. As you can imagine, I collected as many as I could to bring home to play with.

There were many uses for them. I used them as helicopter support for my toy soldiers, or I would slit them and split the pod and stick it to my nose, or I used them as machetes for my GI Joe, and I am sure there were many other uses I am not recalling. How do I know this? Because these helicopters entertained me for hours and hours.

I was immediately struck by how imaginative I had been, how fun it was, and how little I exercised my imagination muscle.

I decided there and then to spend the next month finding opportunities to open myself up and plug into my imagination.