Creating Worlds

Whatever happened to the worlds we created as kids? Cops and robbers, construction in the sandpit, firefighters, knights and princesses, doctors and nurses, riding bikes to faraway places, tea parties with queens, dragons and warriors, flying into space with silver-plated cardboard, winning wars and vanquishing foes with nothing more than sticks and a cape. Somehow, we learnt not to trust those make-believe worlds, that they were just silly games that kids play. But what if they weren’t? What if each of those worlds were windows into alternate realities, like Alice and the looking glass or Lewis’ world at the back of the wardrobe. What if fantasy wasn’t fantasy? What if it was a gateway to new possibilities, worlds not yet realised, but so, so possible, if we could just see things a little differently?

Our perception is everything. It’s like the radar that goes before us, protecting us from things that we don’t want to know or that we might want to distance ourselves from. People who are too hard to deal with or who might get in the way of our drive towards whatever success is for us. Don’t get me wrong, we absolutely need it, but when it’s fixed, it can rob us of so much. It may even tell us that our imagination is silly and that we can’t spend time dreaming up new worlds.

I want to make a case that dreaming up new worlds is exactly what we need to be doing. When we live in a world where people regularly scream silently into their pillows at night, where the desperation is so great that someone would harm themselves or even end their life, something has to change. Something has to give. And as Ivan Illich puts it, perhaps the best way to bring change is not revolution or even reform, but to tell a more compelling story.

If you were to tell a more compelling story about the way life could be, what would it be? Would you include kids running around playing cops and robbers, dressed in masks and capes? Perhaps it would include garden fairies, unicorns, and lots of pink fairy floss. Or what about people from every nationality, sitting together enjoying a large picnic, groups of people in the sun, laughing, cheering for each other, the kids running in between the groups of seated adults, free, unafraid, joy on their faces? Or what about neighbours who are genuinely pleased to see you and support you as you follow your dreams?

Maybe your world would include reconciled families, where young people damaged by an uncaring system can begin to find healing. Would your world include an education system created to prepare people to live out what really matters to them? Would it be driven not by economics, but by the communal desire for the common good? Would your world be a place where everyone’s skills and abilities are valued, where there is joy in the sharing, learning, and growing together?

Could your new perspective and the world you’d create with it include space for everyone’s spirit to soar, to find a home, to be seen as beautiful, where people were embraced, not feared? And in your world, could there be space for sadness as well as joy? Where there was grief, there wasn’t embarrassment or shame, but a sitting with, a holding together?

You see, I think we need to create worlds like this, and they start with our imagination. Because we’re not kids anymore and we’ve learnt to shut it out, we have to access our imagination afresh. We have to slow down, open up our perspective, switch from survival to hope and belief, and allow ourselves to dream. As you do this, others will tell you that you’re silly, you’re wasting time, you’re not being productive, and to just get on with it. But you’ll know this is where true change begins. A small smile will come across your face, and you’ll think to yourself, ‘they just don’t see it yet.’