“Everything you can imagine is real.”

These are the words of the famous artist Pablo Picasso. Artists have the incredible ability to paint what’s in their minds on canvas. They use their imaginations to express their unique perceptions of reality.

Because our imagination does not experience the physical world through the five senses, we often dismiss any truth of our fantastical thoughts because there’s no scientific proof to those “crazy” things that float around inside our heads.

Renowned scientist Albert Einstein once said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution.”

So, what is real and what is not? We love it when a child talks out loud to an imaginary friend, but try doing that as an adult and see what reaction that will bring. There becomes a time when we have to stop thinking that Santa Claus, the Easter bunny and the Tooth Fairy are real. That’s a silent devastation for kids everywhere. It’s as if somebody dropped a huge rock on their little heads and squashed what they loved and what they believed and left them looking at this hard, cruel world asking, “Is this all there is?”

We’re told it’s stupid to believe in Santa and yet, many full-grown adults claim that ghosts are real, aliens live on earth, and millions will say that a god they’ve never seen actually exists. I’ve often wondered if an invisible supernatural being can create the infinite universe, then why can’t he create fairies dancing on my lawn in the early morning sunlight?

If I believe that God who lives in heaven promises eternal life, then why can’t I believe that the beautiful, orange monarch butterfly that I often see fluttering alongside me is my dear, departed friend coming for a visit?

If I can recall the exact details of a previous life as a Civil War soldier who died in the Battle of Gettysburg, then who or what put that thought into my head - and why?

We were given the ability at birth to think of things that are not of physical matter. Perhaps we should take a child’s imagination more seriously. The invisible world that lives inside the brains of little kids is as real to them as anything else. The great big question to ask ourselves is, “Do kids just make up stuff or does their imagination have its own will to put three-headed monsters, talking dragons, or purple giants inside their minds?

Then we have wonderful children’s books with characters like “Pig the Pug,” “The Wonky Donkey,” “Peter Pan” and “Llama Llama Red Pajama.” We thrill a child’s imagination with fiction, which by definition is something that is not true. Yet there comes a time when we’re supposed to leave these “fake” characters in the back row of our memories. We’ve grown up. The day that the world demands that we become mature, our childhood stands forever before the firing squad.

If you observe an adult sitting on the floor with a 4-year-old girl who is displaying her imagination in some form, you see one of two things. Either the adult appears to be uncomfortable because he is too mature for the silliness of a child’s behavior or you see an absolute delight in the grown-up’s face as he relives his own childhood moments with her. Yet, unlike the full-grown man, the little girl has the freedom to play with Gunchy Fizzle Goop, her invisible friend that sits upon her shoulder.

In the novel “The Velveteen Rabbit,” Margery Williams wrote, “Everything that is real was imagined first.” If you take her words literally, then whatever we see inside our heads is or will become real. That leprechaun that sits at the end of the rainbow and the unicorn that flies high through the clouds are as real in the mind as were the thoughts of Henry Ford making the automobile and the Wright brothers inventing the airplane.

American writer Henry David Thoreau lived in the deep woods by himself for two years, and the natural environment inspired him to say, “I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. …”

Am I making a stretch with all this? Are you now thinking I’m delusional? Perhaps you are right, but a recent study by the University of Colorado determined that “imagination is a neurological reality that can impact our brains and our bodies in ways that matter for our well-being.” The research also suggested that what we play out in our minds can transfer to practical application. If a baseball player creates the scenario in his brain of hitting a line drive before he swings his bat at the ball, he can induce that result because he’s already visualized getting the base hit in his mind’s eye.

Baseballs are real, we say, but Jack in the Beanstalk is not. Love is real, we say, but Cupid, the mythical god of affection, isn’t really shooting his arrows of desire into our hearts. Or is he?

Someone wrote, “How can a man look up into the night sky and not see the stars?” American poet Walt Whitman saw these beauties of light, but not as celestial bodies of matter. He described the stars as mystical and spiritual beams of inspiration.

I remember staring at the stars and I was filled with wild imaginings that had charged me with a mindful of energy that I never before did feel and have since felt many times again.

So, if I believe that tomorrow morning that fairies are dancing on my lawn, well then, can you prove to me they’re not really there? Or, will you just think, I’m “not really all there”?

Imagine that!

Rich Strack can be reached at richiesadie11@gmail.com.