A Life of Wonder
And a change in my Times and Seasons
“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”
―Albert Einstein
“…We’re out in our boat and it gets all smashed up and then a big wave just washes us to shore and it’s a new island that we’ve NEVER been to before. Want to play with me?” My son enthusiastically describes the scene in his head to me, eyes lit up, inviting me into his world. He’s hooked me with his talk of cast aways and so I run down into the water with him only to throw myself back on the sand doing my best Tom Hanks impression.
There is a feeling, a surge of joy mingled with pride that seems to be strongest when I witness my children’s imagination at play.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the kind of kids I want my boys to grow up to be. Of course, there is the obvious, kind, caring, and considerate, but if I’m honest, what I really want is for them to be imaginative. It’s been imagination that has been my best and most constant companion throughout life and if I was a fairy godmother (and not the petty kind), it would be a healthy dose of imagination I would bestow upon them.
It has been said that creativity and imagination are innate in children, and while I do think this is true, there seems to be so much now that strips this from them at a younger and younger age. At this point, both my 2 and 4-year-olds have an abundance of it. They are the ages of being immersed in wonder, but it worries me to think for how long?
When I look at the world around me it hits me that I cannot rely solely on my children’s natural drive for curiosity. I cannot assume that because their imagination is strong now it will stay that way. As I watch older kids “grow out of it” I realise that imagination, if not continuously nurtured, can slide away.
Imagination is something I thankfully never fully grew out of. There have of course been dips and times when it has existed far more internally than externally, but mostly it has been there, allowing me to fill days with wonder, to create and explore. When I look back on my childhood there seems to be a clue in why it has been so much easier to hold onto. Imagination in my home was not only nurtured and celebrated but most importantly, it was modelled. It was not treated as something for children to eventually grow out of but as a way of being.
Growing up I watched my parents use their imagination in everyday life. They came up with games that made tedious things seem fun, dreamt up tiny or huge adventures for us and told whimsical stories conjured from thin air.
They involved us in their dreams and ideas, showing us that there were always creative solutions to problems if one just used their imagination. Even if I didn’t consciously notice it at the time, so many parts that made our childhood feel magical was due to their imagination. If we had a creative idea and it was within my parent’s means, they would help make it happen. Telling an untruth was never met with the harsh words of ‘stop lying’ by my mother, but instead ‘that’s an interesting story…’ Creativity and imagination were rewarded, not discouraged.
Being the second youngest of six children there was a point where it was my older sisters, then brothers who also shaped my imagination. My sisters filled me with fairy stories and would lay with me in the forest and teach me how to craft homes for the little people. My brothers showed me imagination in the form of homemade zip lines in the backyard and tree houses created with scrap wood, nails and hammers freely taken from dad’s shed.
As we grew older one of our favourite family activities was and still is, to sit together and imagine futures. It did not matter that these futures required millions of dollars sometimes, or that none of us really had the guts to become a crime family (we were all very into the show ‘Hustle’ for a while). What was fun was the act of imagining and we can still spend hours talking and laughing while imagining the possibilities of life.
I hold these memories dear as I see how much of my life simple things like hearing my sister’s on-the-spot stories full of fantastical characters or watching my mum create dresses from a simple piece of fabric, have shaped me.
I wonder about the things that my children observe me doing and how that will shape them. Reflecting on these things makes me more aware that what I do now matters.
Having a home rooted in imagination isn’t always grand. I don’t host elaborate fairy tea parties daily nor do I always join in with their imaginary play when they ask me (I talk about my reasons for this here) but when my son was convinced this morning that the neighbour’s cat just said ‘no’, I did not tell him that it was a simple meow, but instead widened my eyes with wonder, watching his body electric with excitement as he tried to follow it along the fence to hear more words. My husband tells them nightly stories in bed about the adventures of them and their friend in duck form and I adore hearing the peels of laughter coming from the room. We love to imagine what our dream home would be and Sonny has taken to drawing pictures of his, explaining them in detail, always coming up with something new. There is never a ‘no we can’t do that’ always ‘how cool would that be’.
I don’t want my boys to grow up with a fear of being left alone with their own thoughts, instead, I would love to see them using those sacred moments as time to imagine possibilities. I want them to be able to look to themselves and each other for ideas that spark their joy, not mindlessly follow a crowd. And If I want these things for my boys then I need to be responsible for creating an environment for their imagination to thrive, which means staying close to my own imagination. And to do this I am seeing I need to create a balance, that of living in the now with them while making sure the now is one that will keep them firmly rooted in wonder as they grow.
Through imagination anything is possible
Please comment below and share with me some of the simple ways you foster imagination in your children, or that it was fostered in you.
And if you’d love to stick around for more talk of magic and wonder you can subscribe here.
This is beautiful. I have been thinking about this a lot lately...especially when it comes to raising a boy, at what point does the world tell him he had to stop imagining and playing. In our home,we nurture it, the play, the imagination all of it. Thank you for this beautiful reminder, I am excited for the direction you are heading in.
"I don’t want my boys to grow up with a fear of being left alone with their own thoughts, instead, I would love to see them using those sacred moments as time to imagine possibilities." Yes and yes again. This reminds me of Daniel Quinn's words in his novel The Story of B: "If the world is saved, it will not be saved by old minds with new programs but by new minds with no programs at all." If parents (especially mothers, who usually bear primary responsibility for directly influencing the child's subconscious in the earliest years) are given the gift of cultivating new minds, the ability to flourish the imagination will be a large part of those "new minds". What a delight to hear from you again, and what a lovely shift for your writing here!