Recently, I met up with a childhood friend whom I had not seen in a long time.  We talked about our childhoods and how we used to play Pokemon.  I mentioned to him that I had found out how much data the games took up because one of my students had it on his phone and I asked him to check to see how much data the game took up; it was only 15 megabytes.  That amount of data is very insignificant; I have taken pictures that take up more data than that.

We were both surprised that games taking up so little data had captivated us for years (along with millions of others around the world).  That led us to consider the role of something else in our enjoyment of these games: imagination.

While the games were 8-bit, and the originals had only two colors, black and white, our imaginations colored the worlds the games presented.  Our imaginations allowed us to see the worlds and characters these games portrayed; our imaginations allowed us to share in the adventure and story that the games invited us to participate in; our imaginations caused us to be inspired by these games.

This conversation caused us to consider the power of imagination.  While imagination is frowned upon as we grow older because we are constantly told that imagination causes us to dwell on what is not real, it actually has three major benefits to helping us lead fully successful and actualized lives in addition to elevating the human condition.