Being open-minded is a great thing; you can get rid of boredom and change the way you think. Ideas are everywhere, you just have to look.

I used to love playing outside, but then, slowly, my friends and I ran out of games to play. I mean, there’s only so much of tag or hide-and-seek a person can play. One day, we were just sitting around doing nothing because we were bored, and I was reading The Hunger Games for the third time! Suddenly my brother came to me and showed me a Percy Jackson book, saying, “I want to fight, with real swords and everything. Let’s start a camp, like camp half blood but cooler, with a real training ground.” He was really excited.

It sounded dumb at first, but we were all so desperate to do something, we went along with it. Almost everybody had a fake weapon by the end of the day. We had weapons ranging from toy baseball bats to lightsabers and paper swords. We found an old, run-down playground and transformed it into a camp, with flags everywhere and a box for our weapons. We used the monkey bars, the swings, the slides and even the see-saw to make a safe but challenging obstacle course. I decided to have different levels for children of different age groups, like beginners, intermediates, and, of course, the trainers, which was a big hit. In fact, for a while, a few of the younger kids were following me around asking if I could come and help them in the camp. This new idea for a game led to a lot of new children from the neighborhood, who we didn’t know earlier, coming and playing with us. Before we knew it, we had made a lot of new friends and everybody was getting along and having a lot of fun. We played a lot of games, and even though we did end up disturbing a few neighbors, all is fair in fun and games.

This was just one of the many times when new ideas changed us. And these incidents really show how being open to new ideas and having an adventurous spirit can lead to a stronger community spirit and strengthen bonds.