The power of imagination

Imagination is a quintessentially human ability. It is the capacity to conjure up a different reality, to hold a different world in a thought. To me, imagination is a means to realize the wholeness of a human being.

The longer we live, the more we experience and the more scripts we build about what we experienced in the past and what we will experience in the future. These schemas structure our thoughts in predictable patterns. The patterns are helpful because they facilitate the ways in which we learn and socialize. At the same time, however, the patterns constrain our imagination.

Children’s imagination is less controlled by life algorithms. Unlike adults, children have fewer schemes to draw on. That is why I wrote that children are native artists and native poets – when given the space, children’s creativity is an original act of conveying the mysterious world hidden inside their minds. It is a fascinating space.

I am fortunate that part of my daily job is to observe how children express their imagination in different activities, such as story-making or pretend play. Often, during pretend play, children take on roles that reflect the power relationships they are part of at home or kindergartens. In that kind of role-play, children’s dialogues reproduce what they overheard from their parents or teachers. I hear children instructing their younger siblings or teddy bears to ‘put on the shoes’ or ‘eat nicely’. There is little imagination in those dialogues. But when children set their imagination free, they surprise me with incredibly original images - like ‘a purple Sun that cried stone-like tears’, or a prince who ‘has a green nose because he eats frogs and trees’.

When Slovakia entered the national lockdown in 2020, I was in close contact with my four-year-old niece Zuzanka. We used to meet regularly on Zoom, read books together, talked about what we saw or ate that day, played music instruments. But what we loved most were our imagination games. Zuzanka would say ‘Let us pretend’ and we would pretend. We pretended that she was a princess from a far-away land. We pretended that we ate ice-cream together (she had a strawberry flavour and I had chocolate), or that she could send me her toys through the screen.

One day we pretended that Zuzanka sent me a big package. Seeing the big broad smile on her face when I pretended I was opening her package in my flat (using a box similar to the one she held in her room), was priceless. It wasn’t about the package or what was inside it, it was about the continuation of the same imaginary thread in two different realities. It is that reciprocity in imagination that brings most joy and happiness.

If you invite someone else to be part of your imagined world, you create a shared country with its own boundaries and possibilities. To me, that is the moment when imagination becomes an art. An art that is undervalued in everyday language and our relentless pursuit of tangible manifestations of thoughts. It is a kind of art that cannot happen with anyone, there needs to be a bond, a sense of trust for opening up your soul to the other. There is softness in that act. A bit like when a sunray falls on a long grass stem. There is so much warmth and intimacy in shared imagination that it runs straight through you and touches you deeply. To me, such shared imagination is the ultimate expression of love.

Life is under no expectation to give us what we expect, as Margaret Mitchell said, but life gave us imagination. At times of constraints, imagination brings into relief the resilience of a human mind. It acts like a magic coat that you can put on and fly yourself away from an illness, imprisonment or gloomy situation.

When imagination is reciprocated, it honours your entire being. It allows liberation, healing. I cherish spending time with children because of their generosity in opening up imaginary spaces with trusted adults. And I love poetry for giving me the space to be a Nefelibata, a "Cloud Walker" who lives in the clouds of their own imagination. Do not let ever anyone take your imagination away. Hone your imagination with art, fellow cloud walkers, love seekers.