A year or so ago, I asked my granddaughter Kate, then age 4, to tell me a story. As she spoke, I was intrigued by how her imagination flows from one thought to another. She has no boundaries; she simply lets her mind take her wherever it wants! Her story starred her favorite stuffed animal, Fox, that I gave her when she was 2. Ready?
“Fox is friends with all my other stuffies. They love him because he’s funny and makes silly noises. He loves to eat dinner with me. He likes fish sticks like you have at your house, Nonna. But Fox sometimes is really, really bad at my house. He jumps right up on the table!
“For real, Nonna! He jumps on the table and smells the flowers while everyone else is eating. He pretends to be a bee on the flowers. Or he goes potty on the flowers. Once he jumped on my eyeball!
“Now he’s being very nice. It’s his birthday. He is 2! I made a ‘pin-yana’ (piñata) for him. A talking banana piñata! It can fight with Fox! [I was sad that fighting entered her imagination. I also wanted to ask how a banana could fight without arms or legs, but didn’t want to interrupt her story.]
“If I’m sad, Fox gets on my lap and makes me feel better. He roars like a lion at the other stuffies if they’re sad, but that scares them. Sometimes his bones make him do bad things, but he is really nice on the inside. He sleeps very quietly with me. But one day he told me that he was eating bears during the night. He eats their bones first. Oh! And he doesn’t like dragonflies. He told me they smell weird!
“Foxie loves to make me laugh. He doesn’t like wolves because they’re mean to him, even though he is being friendly. I am Fox’s mom. His dad is magic, so he’s invisible. But his dad still loves him.”
As I reflected on Kate’s amazing tale, I was reminded of my own childhood. I, too, had a very active imagination. I loved to lie in the grass, looking up at the fluffy white clouds, imagining myself sitting on one of them, surveying the world from my lofty perch. My sister and I slid around in our stockinged feet on the kitchen floor, ballerinas in the making. The porch swing on our front porch became a covered wagon. Fueled by my favorite TV Westerns, I loaded up all my dolls and drove us on adventures out west.
Once we leave childhood behind, we might believe we’ve outgrown imagination; that taking time to let thoughts and ideas flow in and out of our minds is somehow frivolous; unnecessary. But nothing could be further from the truth.
Our mind is the key that unlocks a world of possibility. Writers and artists imagine a finished product, or at least a beginning stroke or sentence that fires their creativity. Olympic athletes visualize themselves winning. Gardeners picture their garden, asking themselves: what plants do I want to grow? How will I lay out my garden?
Nothing we accomplish would be possible without our imagination. It is the tool that launches inventions and never-before-dreamed-of accomplishments. We don’t give our imagination the credit it deserves for being the launch pad for our dreams and goals.
Albert Einstein, famed for his intellectual accomplishments, once said: “Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited to all we know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.” Similarly, Walt Disney is quoted as saying, “My imagination creates my reality.” The same is true for all of us.
A case in point: Years ago, I was looking for a new home. I “saw” it in my mind’s eye, and wrote it all down. It was a small house, in good condition, with space for my son’s basketball hoop and a room where teen boys could hang out. It all became reality. Because “thoughts” become “things.”
I invite you to unleash your power of imagination. Let’s break out of our everyday habits and routines, let’s get beyond our likes and dislikes, and dare to dream — in a BIG way. Try something new — or something you haven’t done since childhood. You just might find your life unfolding in new and wondrous ways.
Kathy Baker is a writer and speaker, a messenger of encouragement who loves to touch hearts and tickle souls with her work. She is the author of “Leaving Adversity Plaza,” and “A Tale of Three Choices: His, Hers, Mine.” She loves hearing from her readers and can be reached at [email protected].