Everything You Imagine Is Real

This summer, my 8 year old daughter was looking through an art book and came across Pablo Picasso's famous quote "Everything you imagine is real."  This really struck her as something special, and she's been painting and drawing it on everything for the last month.  I particularly love this drawing she did because she left the fairy's body without a face, so that anyone who looks at it can imagine whatever type of fairy they want which leads one to imagine first a fairy and then any kind of fairy they want.

Since she's come across this quote, she's taken it to heart and has started to "imagine things real."  She started with small things.  She hoped, for example, that there wouldn't be a line at her favorite ride at an amusement park and there wasn't.  When we were staying at a hotel recently, one elevator had a huge window that overlooked the city, and the other elevator was just a plain box.  Victoria imagined that window elevator opening for us and every time, that was the first one to open for us.  Next she imagined all her closest friends being in her class, and she got it. Once she imagined a letter for her in the mail and she got an invitation to a party.

She's been imagining parking spots for us, the neighborhood pool being empty except for us, seeing a shooting star, all sorts of things.  Just this week, she came up to me and said, "Mom, I really think I have a special power.  Whatever I imagine becomes real.  I think this could be dangerous and I'm afraid I might imagine the wrong thing."

Oh how my heart clenched when she said this because, really, isn't this the dilemma we all face at a subconscious level? Aren't we all really just afraid of our own power?

In truth, we really do have the power to imagine anything into reality.  The Greeks wrote about this. Plato wrote "Does not like always attract like."  And over and over in the bible, Jesus tries to tell us about the importance of belief.  "If you have faith and do not doubt, if you say to this mountain, 'be taken up and thrown into the sea,' it will happen. Whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive if you have faith."

Over and over we are reminded by great philosophers, saints, teachers and Christ Himself that we have the ability to imagine what we need into reality, and yet we're afraid of this.  Why?

I said to my daughter, "As long as your heart is aligned with God's, you can never go wrong.  You keep imagining things real, okay?"  Victoria nodded and said, "Okay, but I'm going to stick to small things for now.  When I'm bigger, I'll move on to bigger things."

God, I hope she does.  And I hope she never loses faith that she everything she imagines is real.