Imagination Required
Before I turned 9, I had seen the entire world, traveled through space, and flew through the sky, landed on rooftops, and went whenever the wind blew. I had quite an imagination. My parents encouraged my sisters and me to be inventive, as long as it did not include drawing on freshly painted bedroom walls with my moms' lipsticks. (Laugh) yes, I did that. It was one of the last times I pretended to be a famous artist and do art in my bedroom.
I danced through the house using my dad's flashlight for a microphone and performed for the largest crowd of cheering fans the world has ever seen. I laid in tall grass in the field near our home, looked up to the sky, and sculpted the clouds into ships that would carry me off to distant lands. I twirled with abandon in a favorite dress of mine with a wide flowing skirt that transformed me into a spinning and beautiful dancer. My sisters, the neighbor kids, and I would turn the patio furniture over in the back yard and create unexplored caves and jungles. Simple lunch pails became newly discovered, forgotten chests of gold and precious gems stacked up in dark, damp caverns. I would snuggle in bed at night and lay unblinking. I glared at my bedroom curtains, imagining all kinds of creatures that could be casting the ominous shadows. In my child's mind, the nighttime sounds coming from the train yard a mile away became the sounds of Godzilla and King Kong duking it out. The booming sounds of the shunting trains were their ginormous feet hitting the ground. (Giggle) These moments of my life were so wonderful; I grew up wanting to share them and write about them, so now, I meander into the topic of imagination.
"Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it, we go nowhere. "Carl Sagan
How do you give wings to a child who cannot walk, or the ability to see and experience distant lands and people to someone who is blind, or restore youth to the elderly? A person may not be able to leave their bed, let alone their hometown. Still, they can be taken to the prehistoric past or distant future, walk, run or fly through far-off places or live different lives. How do you show a person they are not the only one to feel alone, frightened, or lost? They can slay the giants, be the hero, and experience loyal friendships that never end? It is through the power of imagination.
Paul Harvey, a legendary radio commentator and one of my heroes, gave a key-note speech at the R&R Radio Seminar in 2003 and talked about imagination and why radio was so influential;
"Special effects for all of their sophistication are still not as effective as human imagination. Fourth and fifth graders surveyed say that after seeing a Harry Potter movie when they try to reread a Harry Potter book, their imagination is constricted and limited by what they have seen. Quidditch was much more fun in our minds."
Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.
Albert Einstein
There are people through the centuries who have had to use their inventive minds to fill the lonely or unhappy world in which they live. How many of our special loved ones cannot experience much of the world but can live in a world they create in their minds? Is it a bad thing to imagine a different world for yourself if you cannot feed yourself, move, talk, or are dying of illness? Who are we non-disabled people to judge or withhold an escape for those who cannot escape any other way?
If you cannot hold a book, understand a movie or see it, that does not matter; the mind can take you where you want to go.
A child is pure and not yet beaten into believing that all they can imagine is not possible. They can create a reality, and the memories made there stay with them until they are old. Walt Disney once said, "That's the real trouble with the world; too many people grow up."
When Annie was a girl (For the sake of this story, let's call her Annie), she had babies of all shapes and sizes. They were dolls, teddy bears. Some were bald and tattered; what they looked like did not matter, and each night she tenderly and lovingly went through a bedtime ritual with each one. In her mind, she was their mommy, and they needed her love, affection, and protection from the cold. She told each cloth, plastic, and furry critter that she would always love them, kissed them goodnight, covered them up, and then, and only then, did she go to bed herself. The tucking-in of the babies went on every night from the time she was a toddler until she turned nine, and then she lovingly packed them away. As Annie grew older, all she wanted was to be a mommy and give her love to a real baby, but at the age of 25, she was struck with a rare cancer that nearly killed her, and the treatments took away her chances of becoming the mommy she always wanted to be. How does my story of childhood imagination reconcile this loss of a dream? Once Annie saw a baby, and tear welled up to her aging eyes. Her sister asked if she was crying because she did not have a child. Annie turned to her sister, smiled, and said, "ahh, you forgot, I have had dozens of all shapes and sizes, and I loved them, and they loved me."
Let those who cannot walk fly
Let those who cannot see paint
Let those who will not live much longer live a thousand lives of wonder.
Grab your imagination and go with them
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This is Debby Wells
