Power in Visualization or Vivid Imagination

I remember another moment from childhood with a crisp visvidness. It was perhaps the first time I can remember feeling astonished by being met with an expression of the metaphysical theorys my young mind was working on.

My mother and I were coming out of a hardware store in the Summer, and there was a sidewalk sale. It was the early eighties, and in the small suburban town I was in, this was almost something of a social event. There was a vendor with cotton candy. There were tables of stickers and toys and other things for very low prices. I'm sure there were hotdogs. I remember that there were games. One of them involved spinning a roulette wheel after guessing a number. If it landed on your number you won a prize. I wanted the little stuffed puppy, and badly. I guessed my favorite number, and the roulette wheel spun round and round. In my mind, I VIVIDLY IMAGINED that ball landing in the numbered spot I wanted. Just as the picture was totally clear, the spinner stopped. On my number. I got the stuffed puppy.

My imaginary friend said “ Well, now that you know how that works, life is going to get extremely interesting. “

I was about seven, and I still remember that moment very clearly. It's curious, the way such things come so naturally to children. I think there really must be something to the idea that children have not been taught to believe that magic isn't real yet, that their ideas are not steeped in the knowledge of a firm set of rules for reality, and that their experiences of fairytale stories and superhero cartoons in fact sttep them in the idea that magic really is real and the adults don't get it. That in fact is why Peter and Wendy didn't want to grow up- they didn't want to loose the land of make believe and the feeling that it has a certain kind of reality to it.

25 years later, I'm more rather than less sure that what we believe and dream are possible, and how we think on those things, has a -dramatic- effect on the courses and pathways of our lives. Whether we know it or not.