7. Gaslighting Imaginary Friends

Hello, Welcome. I’m Renée Valentina and this is Musing Interruptus. Musing Interruptus is a podcast for sharing thoughts and stories and enjoying idiomatic phrases. You can read along; just click on continue reading in the description to open a Google Doc with the transcription of this episode. The idiomatic expressions are in italics. Try to get the meaning from the context and then look them up to see if you were right. If you like it, subscribe, follow, and share, but more importantly, continue the conversation. Drop a comment with your answers to today’s questions! I love hearing from you! The background music is called Rose Ornamental by Blue Dot.

Children usually abandon their imaginary friends. You heard me, abandon. The sheer amount of movies alerting us to this situation is telling of the magnitude of this issue. You think I’m joking. That’s ok. You’ve been conditioned to believe that. I’m not clear on whether or not we were supposed to stop using our imagination. The people who continue to use it are generally very successful. I wonder why we are asked to stop. Who does it benefit? Why is adulting correlated with rejecting or suppressing that aspect of childhood? Why are societies more tolerant of childlike irresponsibility and carelessness in adults than of imaginary friends?