The Imaginarium

Everybody has their vices, their secret loves and obsessions that get them through the day. Some people will involve themselves in smoking or drinking, some people will work out, some people will treat themselves to a cheeseburger with fries and an ice cream sundae with chocolate syrup, whipped cream, nuts, and a cherry on top. My ultimate vice...is watching Disney Channel's “Phineas and Ferb.”
 
These little vices clear our mind, help us let go of our daily fears, stresses, and anxiety, smooth out metaphorical knots in our back and just be free for a second. When I get stressed out, I can almost feel too many thoughts and emotions bubbling in my brain and I desperately want to open up a window and let all of the steam of anxiety escape into the cool air. As they have not created some sort of machine for this, I have to stick to my deep love and obsession for a show targeted at 6-10 year olds.
 
A quick back story if you've never seen or heard of the show: Phineas and Ferb, two brothers, are on summer vacation and have decided to “have the best day ever,” every day. They build rockets to go into space, take time machines back to the Mesozoic era, build forts that have rooms full of terracotta sculptures and a full orchestra—and yet they manage to clean all of it up much to the utter distress of their older sister Candace that spends every episode trying to bust them. Their pet platypus, Perry, is also a secret agent but that's a whole other story. 
 
I know exactly why I love this show and why it's my biggest vice. When I feel that abundance of emotions and stress, I can lose myself in the world of imagination and impossible possibilities and I feel like a kid again. Living in a city, I feel that cynicism, sarcasm and just plain dreariness run rampant through each daily transactions, and with all of this rushing around, we forget to imagine and dream. They say when you go through the motions every day life over and over again, it's called the “dream state”; but isn't it more like a nightmare? Or maybe just a lack of dream.
 
I think it's so important to keep those fantastic dreams even if they seem impossible, even if they are unrealistic. Just having a tiny bit of imagination can free you from the stress, let your mind wander to visit unchartered territories and helps you to see the bigger picture. I try to think of something fantastic and impossible everyday in the hopes that one day someone will create it, or at the very least, feel like I was unique for a moment for thinking of an extraordinary notion that's never been thought of. For that one moment, I believe impossible possibilities do exist and although I must return to reality, I get back a little bit of childish excitement and that is the best sort of vice.
 
As they say in “Phineas and Ferb,” I know what we're going to do today. We're going to have the best day ever.