Imagination

Imagination still has its very powerful hold on me, and I’m not ashamed to admit it. Ever since I was five years old, I have loved to read, consuming books by the dozens. Stories have allowed me the opportunity to venture far from the comfort of my own home without ever leaving it, to explore worlds unknown and wrap myself up in the reality of new characters and a different time. For a while, I could forget my reality and conquer my struggles just through stepping into a daydream. I must admit, at 26, this hasn’t changed all that much.

While my poems are a reflection of what I’m feeling on the inside, I often go to another place when I’m writing them, where I have the liberty to bend the words and images at my will. I have never found a freedom greater than this. What could be better than creating your own worlds and shaping them any which way you chose? Ideas become limitless; the impossible finds a way to occur, even if the creator and the reader are the only witnesses. Why would I want to let that magic go just because I’m a little older? My creative well might be in danger of drying up if I did.

I often attribute my dreams to imagination as well. The buildings, landscapes and people I see (some of which I’ve never met before), present themselves in such detail, it’s hard to know exactly where else they could have come from. More than one of my ideas for stories has been drawn from my dreams, in fact. It makes sense that the realm in which the imagination would be the most free is that of dreams.

Despite venturing off to lands of mystic and magic, I’m still in touch with reality. I wake up every day and take care of the things that need taken care of. I just can’t help it when a song takes me away, or a book captures a part of my heart, for these are the moments in which I am most inspired. To the artist, inspiration is a dear and treasured gift.

We live in a world that can be chaotic, violent, and sometimes disparaging. It is easy to become afraid to step outside of this reality and create a temporary escape for ourselves. I would encourage each and every one of my readers make an attempt however, because taking even those five minutes out of your day to embrace dreaming can make all the difference in the outcome of your day. Imagination is the place where you can go to remind yourself that perhaps the impossible can be one day made possible after all. You still have the creative powers within you, because they have never left—maybe you just hid them away for a while. In much the same way as we might treat ourselves to a drink or some chocolate at the end of a hard week, why not grant ourselves the reward of unleashing them every now and again?