The Importance of Imagination

Einstein held that imagination is more important than knowledge: “I am enough of the artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.”

It’s hard to disagree. Imagination is the highest form of thought, and almost divine in its reach. With enough imagination, we could identify and solve all of our problems. With enough imagination, we would never have to work again—or, at least, not for money. With enough imagination, we could win over, or defeat, anyone we wanted to. But our imagination is so poor that we haven’t even imagined what it would be like to have that kind of imagination.

Most children begin to develop pretend play at around 15 months of age. What are children doing when they pretend play? And why are they so absorbed in works of imagination? By playing out scenarios and extending themselves beyond their limited experience, children seek to make sense of the world and find their place within it. This meaning-making is full of emotion—joy, excitement, awe—and finds an echo in every subsequent act of creation.

Think back to your favourite teacher at school. The teachers whom we hold dear to our hearts, who changed the course of our lives, are not those who assiduously taught us the most facts, or fastidiously covered every bulleted point on the syllabus, but those who moved and inspired us, those who fired up our imagination and opened us up to ourselves and to the world.

Despite its importance to the individual and society, our system of education leaves very little place for imagination. Our schools and universities and wider society are often forced to prioritise knowing over thinking, and equate thinking with reasoning, and reasoning with logic. We need to make more time and space for thinking, and rehabilitate alternative forms of cognition such as imagination, inspiration, and emotion that can support, supplement, or supplant reason and return us to wholeness.

In recent years, I’ve been trying to recover the bright and vivid imagination that I left behind in primary school. For that, I’ve been doing just three things, all of them very simple to explain:

• Being aware of the importance of imagination.

• Making time for sleep and idleness.

• Taking inspiration from the natural world.

How might that translate to you and your children? Don’t skimp on sleep. Don’t fill every hour of the day with scheduled activities. Make time for idleness, for daydreaming, and long walks in nature. Above all, don’t worry about ‘wasting time.’ While we are idling, in bed, in the bath, our unconscious mind is busy assimilating and processing disparate pieces of information, and making all sorts of novel connections and projections. Time is a very strange thing, and not at all linear: sometimes, the best way of using it is to ‘waste’ it.

12 tips for Nurturing Imagination in Your Children:

Allow for unscheduled down-time, even for ‘boredom.’

Discourage passive TVs, tablets, and other electronics.

Encourage reading, make sure there are plenty of age-appropriate books around. Encourage story-telling and writing.

Encourage pretend play, even if it gets messy!

Spend time in botanical gardens, zoos, art museums, science museums, natural history museums…

Spend a lot of time outdoors.

Travel to different places: forest, beach, mountains, abroad.

Encourage contact with different people and cultures.

Encourage thought-provoking questions, and ask some yourself.

Try not to impose pre-conceived notions, especially pre-conceived notions of what it means to be successful.

Allow your children to follow their enthusiasms, however eccentric, impractical, or disruptive they may seem. You never know where they may lead!

Dr Neel Burton is a leading psychiatrist and author of Hypersanity: Thinking Beyond Thinking, out now, priced £12.99. To find out more, visit www.neelburton.com