Back in the golden days of my childhood, my brothers and I used to play with legos. I built these glorious, soaring structures bursting with lego gold and diamonds. It was an empire of riches so vast, that it burnt a searing envy into those lucky enough to gaze upon it. It didn’t last forever unfortunately, as my lego empire slowly vanished, stolen away, piece by piece, carted off into distant lands. At first I suspected my older brother Alex, the ruler of a rival empire. Of course he did it, that gullible fool Theo would never steal from me! But as I interrogated Alex I discovered that it must’ve been Theo. So without a moment’s notice, I crept into his room and began the descent into his domain. Inside the confines of that god-forsaken abyss were towers of junk and filth, only dwarfed by the walls of the room itself. I tiptoed my way through the hordes of marbles and Lincoln logs and made my way towards the bottom of the trash pit, his dresser. Inside the dresser, hidden under socks and covered by underwear, I found the lost wealth of my kingdom. I rushed downstairs, and presented the incriminating evidence to my parents and hoped that would put an end to his schemes. Much to my dismay, this was only the spark setting flame to Theo’s inferno.

In reality, Theo wasn’t that bad. Sure he lied as much as a politician and he might’ve visited inappropriate web pages, but he did some good too. For starters, he’s given me plenty of stories to make fun of him with at his wedding. In all seriousness though, the time I spent with Theo and my older brother, Alex, were some of the most creative and bizarre moments in my life. We produced hour-long movies of nonsense, built and destroyed empires in the blink of an eye and fought out the endless wars of the ancient Bionicles. Together, we learned how to create and more importantly, how to weave that creativity into everyday life.

For a while, Theo kept quiet and he bid his time. Eventually the lies began, harmless at first but transformed into something malicious. “Who broke this glass?”, “Wasn’t me”, “Why is this laptop in your room Theo?”, “I don’t know, maybe Brendan put it there”, and the most revolting and vile crime of all “Where did all the cookies go Theo?”. Not only did his lies put the blame on me and my brother, but they also evaded all our attempts to disprove them. So to combat this malignant threat to our existence, we worked together to bring him to justice. We donned our ninja gear, 2 black blankets, and tailed him like his own shadow, a shadow with a camera. We captured him committing all sorts of high profile crimes, cookie stealing, popsicle theft, tax evasion, and even a few counts of computer time sneaking(about as serious as it gets). With this undeniable evidence we were able to prove our honesty and get Theo incarcerated for 2 whole weeks of no computer time, equivalent to a lifetime sentence in kid years. The verdict crashed down upon Theo, casting him back down into the deepest pit where he belonged. The world blazed with a new fire, but instead of searing with Theo’s inferno of hatred, it blazed with my fire for justice. And so began the golden age of Brendan.

In the end, Theo’s reign of tyranny collapsed upon itself, but my story doesn’t end with it. From this experience and the ones that followed, I managed to preserve my ability to think creatively. I clung to my imagination in a society that seeks to restrict it in favor of sheer logic. In our world today, many lose that childlike ability to imagine, the skill that is vital to become not just successful, but to thrive. Without it, we doom ourselves to become machines whose sole purpose is to crunch numbers and file tax returns, inhuman slaves to corporate empires. This is my strength. Creativity not only embodies who I am as a person, but will also be my tool to make this world a better place for us all.