Having immersed myself in the world of Narnia in the lead up to Christmas (well, all but the last of the books, I am not inclined to read about the end of Narnia) I then turned to another of the children’s authors I had not read, Francis Hodgson Burnett. The idea of the secret garden helping children to wake up within themselves as they watch the garden wake into spring is very beautiful.
After that cold snap back in December when we were covered in a blanket of snow, the weather has become unseasonably warm. It has tricked many plants into believing that spring has arrived. So, in my own garden, the bulbs are poking through, the buds are swelling, catkins are dropping, and the birds singing in great expectation, especially my robin. All so evocative of ‘The Secret Garden’.
Although they have created different ‘fantasy’ worlds, both authors have one thing in common; they believe that the worlds of our imagination become closed to us once we reach ten years old. The fact that these books were written when they themselves were adults belies this fact, of course. Maybe they felt it was necessary to create this ten-year-old barrier in order to appear more credulous in an increasingly scientific world; imagination and made up worlds were for children, of course!
I find it very sad that the imagination is given such short shrift by many adults; treated as a place where things are ‘made up’ and therefore not ‘real’ in conventional terms.
The imagination is the place from which new ideas spring. The greatest inventors of our time have used their imagination. As a kid I loved Thunderbirds and had my own ‘imaginary’ wrist watch by way of which I could communicate with Tracey Island. Fifty or so years later, these things actually came into existence.
When I was 14, two men walked on the Moon for the first time. In order for them to get there, scientists with a certain amount of knowledge and know-how had to use their imagination to design a vehicle that could make the journey in a controlled manner whilst sustaining life.
Neither of these inventions can be down to logic alone, to be an inventor or to come up with a idea, you need that spark of passion, that stroke of genius.
This is what our imagination is all about. Having an idea and then trying to work out how to make it happen.
It can be misused, of course, as Mary Shelley showed us with her mad doctor attempting to create life from body parts and the life giving force of lightning. For a less fictional example, think about history and the number of kings and dictators who have imagined they could conquer the world and then set out to do so with great armies causing death and destruction and ruination. Sadly, this attitude is still prevalent today as the war upon Ukraine attests.
The imagination of one person with power can be very dangerous. But we need our imagination in order to ‘make something of ourselves’. Imagination is the part of us that looks for better ways of doing things in our life, it is the driving force that pushes us forward. People who work with it change their lives, achieve their dreams, reach their goals. Great athletes use it all the time and the Guinness Book of Records is full of such people.
If imagination can make each of us change our own life, just think how powerful would be the combination of many people having the same ‘dream’. It was this imaginative collaboration that allowed those two men to walk on the moon back in 1969.
Humans work with imagination all the time. When we ask a child, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” we are asking them to use their imagination. Yet, when they say they have been playing with the fairies at the bottom of the garden, we dismiss this as being “just their imagination” as though it could not possibly be real. Children under ten will very easily live in a imaginative world (I had long and usually very funny conversations with my teddy bears) and what they experience is very real to them.
So, does the approach of puberty really make us incapable of accessing this world? To put it another way, does our imagination, or its role in our life, change with puberty? Does the door to ‘Wonderland’ close or are we influenced by adults who have forgotten how to access it?
As one who still lives in her imagination quite a lot, I would suggest that the door to ‘Wonderland’ never closes. But puberty brings with it a driving force that makes us use it differently.
We become aware that there are limitations to living in a three dimensional world and this requires us to adjust our imaginative drive accordingly. After puberty, what we want to be when we grow up becomes something we need to think about in earnest and, unless we have limitless funds available, our options tend to be limited. Maybe this is why we feel the door has closed?
Is has not.
So my thought on this new year’s day is that it would do us all a lot of good to work with our imagination and usher in that happy new year we wish each other.
Here is a good place to start: Remember the world you grew up in as a child, remember your dreams and games and how you felt. Yes, there were probably some scary things but I expect there were a lot of wonder-full dreams as well. I do not suggest we indulge in escapism, I suggest that we remember how to see the wonder of things. There is magic all around. Look for the bulbs that are poking through the dark earth, the swelling buds on the bushes, the catkins dropping in the hazels. The earth is waking up again after a winter’s sleep. It can be as magical for us as it was for the children in the secret garden. Allow yourself to fill up with the excitement of the child you once were. And maybe, just ahead in the mist, you will meet the local dragon. (If you do, let me know what colour it is.)
Wishing you a magical 2023.