Jesse BuschI believe in the power of the imagination. Spending a summer working at the Boys and Girls club has really reminded me of how strong that part of mind can be. When completely unleashed, a few kids can completely forget about their surroundings. They simply know that they are Jedi fighting on a distant planet, or pirates working aboard the infamous Black Pearl. The furniture of their house becomes mountains, the floor lava and the pillows the only places where it’s safe to step.

I have enjoyed such adventures, many in the comfort of my own home. I would have my best friend over, and we would spend hours playing with my plastic building set. Putting the pieces together, making strange devises and quickly explaining what they did. It was a competition of inventors, of mad scientists really, trying to out-invent the other and create the single device that could not be topped. If I remember correctly, we never did find that ultimate, unstoppable weapon. The curse of only having one afternoon to play.

With age, however, it seems that society forces us to close that door in our mind. With each passing year a great chain is laid across the doorway, slowly forcing it shut. A snake tightening its hold on our body, a noose closing about our neck. We are expected to act more mature, to leave our worlds of fantasy behind and focus on what’s going on around us. To leave our light sabers on the floor and go skateboarding, or lower the pirate flag and spend endless hours chatting or blogging on Myspace. Even I have drifted away from my mad scientist days, forced to bend my attention to homework, part-time jobs, and a thousand other trivial matters.

Still, I have personally experienced that an imagination never goes quietly into the night. It will adapt, shape shift and take on a new form. For an aspiring author like me, it becomes the ability to weave a story of magic and mystery. For artists, it’s to take what they see in their eyes or mind and place it on a canvas. Even for scientists, their imagination gives them the ability to invent, to see a possibility and turn it into a reality.

Adaptive, inventive, invisible, vigilant, visionary, and untamable, that is the nature of an imagination. It is something that society tried to stifle, tires to kill. Like a weed in the garden, we are taught to try and pull it from the ground. Still, weeds are hard to kill, and like them I believe that my imagination is a plant that is best left to grow wild.

Jesse Busch is a 2007 graduate of Worland High School. He is currently attending the University of Southern California and is a member of the USC Trojan Marching Band. In his spare time he still lets his imagination run wild when he's writing fantasy novels and organizing haunted houses.