Imagination is a curious thing. We tolerate it amongst our young, even celebrate it at times - as long as the invisible friends don’t hang around too long. It is true that we all crave the product of the imaginative; forty years of Star Wars confirms this craving. And yet, apart from the theatre, the studio, or a good novel, I think imagination is largely dismissed as childhood frivolity.
Our corporate culture demands efficiency and productivity. On the whole, creative imagination is relegated to the arts, seen as soft, and dismissed as unreliable intuition at best. The real money, the results are found in facts, truth, objective reality, research, science and when we are vulnerable, luck.
I have been listening to Harry Potter for the last couple of months. I watched all the movies, more times than I wanted as my son grew up, fascinated with the series, but I never read the books until now. I must say that I have thoroughly enjoyed them, and grown to appreciate the acting of Jim Dale, who does a masterful job bringing life to the many characters within Rowling’s tales.
I haven’t read the books in order, and have just wrapped up The Deathly Hallows. One of the things in that book, along with preceeding volumes, that has captured my imagination is the pensive. That stone bowl stored in Dumbledore's office cabinet which allows he and Harry to relive the memories of others as if they had experienced them first hand. I would love to have a pensive. I would love to be able to take the memories of others and dump them into a bowl, swirl them around, plunge my head into the silvery mist and take a look around.
In fact, there are so many things that happen in the Harry Potter stories that I would love to experience. I am enthralled by the imagination of J.K. Rowlings as she spins her yarn of a magical world which beckons me into it.
But that pensive may offer us a glimpse into our own creative imagination.
Finding time to reflect in our busy, crowded, and noisy world is difficult at best. Our society is beset with distractions, our devices are glued to our hands, and it is a rarity that our eyeballs are ever free from some sort of screen. Meditation Apps like Calm and Headspace are now Billion dollar companies as people scramble desperately to find some way of shutting out the constant barrage of noise.
One of the things that I have valued the most about our new neighbourhood is its proximity to the river valley. And while my physical self has greatly benefited from my time hiking single track trails, I think my mind has benefited equally. I rarely walk in silence. Usually I am listening to a book on Audible either being entertained or instructed. The habit of walking and listening has been one of my great joys over the past eighteen months. What I have also discovered as I walk is that I don’t simply listen; I also process, and ponder, and dream, and remember and reflect. What I have discovered is that my time in the river valley has become my own personal form of a pensive where I have the opportunity to plunge into the imaginative and creative elements of my inner world, and dare I say even my subconsciousness. As I walk and listen, I have written poems, dreamt new beginnings, new ventures, worked out relationships, discovered new things about myself and others; the list could go on.
As I wander on the banks of the Edmonton river system, I have inadvertently discovered the key to enabling my mind to wander, and as it meanders the byproduct of that activity is the unleashing of a creative and imaginative energy. Some would label this process meditation, or prayer, perhaps communing with the universe? I am not sure that I even know how to label it, or if I even care. What I do know is that my life is more full, more complete, more integrated than it used to be.
Would it be amazing to live in the world of Harry Potter, of course it would. The thought of snapping your fingers and having the physical world do your bidding is an intoxicating prospect. But what we should also recognize woven into the stories of Rowling is the angst and many underlying problems rife in that world which mirrors our own. Having magic didn’t solve Harry’s problems, and wouldn’t solve all of our problems, but rather, replace them with new ones. The desire to escape haunts us all, and requires effort to rebuff. Escape is never the answer, at least that is what Brené Brown tells us! Where I think the answer lies is in unleashing our imagination, in finding a way to tap into our creative self and spending time alone there. The answer - at least in part - is in discovering your personal pensive and allowing yourself the time and space to wander and look around, once you have taken the plunge through the swirling mists of your own mind.