Do you ever imagine things?

Anders Conbere made me aware of a video floating around Friday about Mr. Rogers. At first, I was a little nervous about clicking. I sure hope this isn’t comedy using Mr. Rogers’ clips. That guy is too sacred to me.

I’m thrilled I clicked the link.

The video brings up a ton of emotions and thoughts about how creativity and imagination has been so important in my life and where it came from.

I’m sure it’s an equation of both nature and nurture. And I’ve had a whole lot of nurture I’m thankful for.

I’m insanely thankful for the physical and mental tools my parents gave me to play with. My mom worked in microbiology. I had an interest in science. So of course I had your typical chemistry sets you could buy for any kid. But then my mom kicked it up a notch :) Working at a hospital, she brought home fantastical things.

Pipets and pipet guns, dozens and dozens of test tubes and beakers. She’d bring home these blood agar plates, which you could expose to air or your hands and they’d grow mold and fungus very quickly.

Once upon coming home from a family vacation, I found some kind of plant life-looking thing growing in a test tube of some concoction I made. I’m still pretty convinced I had created some new life form from scratch.

My father isn’t a scientist. He’s a commercial real estate agent. One of his greatest gifts to me was his ability to imagine he could build anything he put his mind to. The backyard needed a big fence. There was no question in his mind who was building this glorious fence he had imagined. He put in the grit, and made an awesome fence. He did that with every house project or thing he touched. The basement needed to be finished. It was your typical unfinished (scary) basement. He turned it into a multi-room disneyland for kids and adults. Plenty of room to play games, do puzzles, study, play ping pong, you name it.

These gifts have always led me to be able to day dream I can do anything, with an intense curiosity about all sorts of things I’ve never done before.

Often it comes with friction.

I remember in grade school that I had imagined my school backpack was not actually a backpack. In fact, it was a portable particle accelerator also known as the Ghostbuster’s proton pack for catching ghosts. A childhood friend did not share this particular imagination. There was a brief fight involved. :)

Or the ambiguous feeling days 6 months after we started our first Y Combinator company, Inkling. There was very little money coming in. We had done one paying deal thus far, but that money didn’t go very far. It’s easy to give up at that point.

It takes an insane amount of imagination and curiosity to see if you can pull a business out of nothingness.

And we were lucky to have it. Thank you, Mom. Thank you, Dad. Thank you, Mr. Rogers, for your contribution to all of this.

The video above helps me remember a few things I’ve always thought were important, but I need to keep being reminded of over and over and over again, because it’s tough to keep at them.

Be curious. Be imaginative. Let your ideas grow. Accept the many people who think differently than you.

I dare you to watch the above and not be inspired to take some action today on one of those tasks. Ask why about something you would normally take for granted today. Sign up for that class. (There’s a ton of low commitment one-day classes on things out there to experiment with). Buy a book on a subject you have absolutely no notion about.

Mr. Roger’s inspiration doesn’t stop with just a wonderful remix of clips from his TV show. He has a legacy. He spoke at my sister’s college graduation in 2001.

When I graduated from college I had little notion of how I’d ever be able to put together all the interests that I had. It took a good deal of time, and my parents probably wondered if I’d ever be able to make anything of all I’d been given; but after a lot of help from a lot of people, I’ll never forget the sense of wholeness I felt when I finally realized what, in fact, I really was: not just a song writer or a language buff or a student of human development or a telecommunicator, but I was someone who could use every single talent that had ever been given to me in the service of children (and their families). I can tell you that it was that particular focus that made all the difference. I can also tell you that none of that was written on the back of my college diploma. It’s a miracle when we finally discover whom we’re best equipped to serve, when we can best appreciate the unique life we’ve been given.

There’s no way you can’t take away something awesome from his speech.

My favorite bit from the video is how it all gets started.

How we all get started doing anything.

This is a cassette player with a little cassette in here and there’s nothing written on it.

So we’ll just have to play it to see what it is.

Mr. Rogers

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