Recently, one of the uncelebrated savants of the new millennium was quoted in a newspaper as saying children now are acutely "visual" and live in a "world of images."
He then went on to say the children of the new millennium have no need of imagination. This is outrageous. They do have a need for imagination. The problem is that they have too little time to imagine, too little time to cultivate the blessings of travelling in their own minds to build their own view of life and discover their own individuality. They need liberal doses of solitude.
When I seek solitude I often re-discover two false memories, powerfully shaped by imagination. In one, I am in a log cabin in a snow-mantled forest, beside a pristine, ice covered lake. There is no electricity and no telephone. I go to the lake with an axe and a pail to bring in water. Then I go back to the cold porch to bring in firewood and a small slab of home-cured bacon. I go to the cellar for two eggs, stored with others in a water glass. While there, I check on the condition of potatoes and other vegetables. Then I go up to the wood stove with the cooking top, add fuel to the firebox and begin to prepare breakfast. After the meal is done, the dishes washed and the lamp chimneys polished, I go to the window to see what animals have left footprints in the snow. I listen to the sighing of a young wind. Then I go to the sturdy table that holds a manual typewriter and a ream of paper. I give my inner self permission to travel into any place in the world and any time that has ever been
It never happened and never will happen.
In another false memory I hear the sounds from an ancient gramophone record entitled In a Monastery Garden. There is sweet, soft music, a Gregorian chant, the measured tolling of a bell. I am a tired and hungry friar coming in from work in the fields. I share simple, wholesome fare with the other brothers and then I go to my cell.
While reciting a formalized prayer, I wonder why human beings are on Earth and what they are intended to do. I seem to hear the whispered words, "Be still and know that I am God." Then I sleep the dreamless sleep of the virtuous
It never happened and it never will happen.
What these false mind imprints reveal is a longing to be free, even for only a little time, from a society that seems to be teetering on the edge of madness. We all need silence and solitude, even children. We need to be free of intrusions so that we can discover ourselves. In solitude and silence, we find the germs of inventions, the first visions of a noble purposes and the birth of great literature, music and art.
Children enmeshed in external images need time for finding inward visions. We all need to imagine what could be.
