Those of Other Worlds

When I was a young boy, I had an imaginary friend. In fact, I had many imaginary companions. These make-believe friends of mine were beyond count; they were the ones that walked with me and played with me beneath the boughs of my childhood. I am not ashamed to admit this because, for one, these make-believe friends were quite dear to my heart at the time; and for two, I am confident that I was by no means the only person who rubbed shoulders with those of other worlds as a child. 

The adventures that I shared in with these make-believe companions were unrivaled and legendary, and they have since proved to be some of my warmest and dearest memories of childhood. Though, I must admit, these adventures were often inspired by whatever fad of the imagination I found myself in at the time and were by no means always original in their origins. However, my imagination and I only ever used the stories I read or the films I watched as a landscape or backdrop for our own escapades. Surely, my imaginary friends and I slew many orcs in our day and took part in many epic battles across Middle-Earth, but these were our adventures. It was always other orcs that we slew and other battles that we fought in, different from those of Aragorn and Gandalf, though at times our paths may have crossed with theirs. I was always eager to walk those roads to Rivendell or see the land of Mordor from afar, and I often found myself doing that very thing; but I was also content to roam those hills that the Fellowship did not visit, rather letting the pines of my own backyard cast shadows on lands that Tolkien did not speak of. 

These escapades, as I call them, were numerous. Indeed, they were the earliest outlet I had as a child to release my imaginative constipation. Earliest imaginative outlet, of course, before I learned how to form letters and words and from there on went to form worlds and fantastic folk to occupy them. These escapades were very much the beginning of an adventure that would continue into adulthood; a collecting of twigs and branches to be used in a fire that was not yet lit. The truth nevertheless was this: I filled my mind as well as my heart with friends that did not exist except in my own imagination, and yet, they were ever so dear to me despite the fact that no one else ever knew their names or how well they had fought in battle.

However, as the days and years waned, these friends of mine became more and more distant, and dust began to collect on the swords and shields we once used everyday. As school began and I made other friends, friends of real people so to speak, I did not see my make-believe friends nearly as often, and I even began to forget the sound of their voice. They no doubt sat around a charcoal fire telling one another tales of our past journeys as they waited for me to come home from school, at which time we would be off once again in search of strange lands and stranger creatures to fight within those lands. Somedays I did come to meet them, and the wood trembled as our band of adventures journeyed among its ancient oaks and whispering streams in search of dragons to slay and trolls to behead. Though, there were other days that I did not join my friends. As I grew older, those days began to grow longer, and soon the fire my friends sat around began to grow cold as they waited for a young boy that would never return.

—

As you read these words, I do hope that I managed to kindle a fire within your own heart; or rather, awake from the cooling embers a fire that has long since grown cold. Just as work and taxes and oil changes are the staples of adulthood, so too are imaginary friends the anchor of childhood. Whether it be a stuffed tiger, or something beyond this world entirely, we have all shared in friendships with those of other worlds. 

These were the companions that waited for us at home while we spent time at our desks in school, wasting our energies on math and music when there were kingdoms to claim and beasts to slay beyond those classroom walls. Perhaps we saw our imaginary friends from time to time at recess, but we nonetheless wanted to get home with them as soon as possible to continue the adventure that our education so rudely interrupted.

  Our earthly friends, the ones we could touch and talk to and play soccer with, though in their own ways lovely, were little match for our other friends that held company with kings and wizards. In the light of such great friends as these, so and so from the school yard who did this and that suddenly became dull and unimpressive; a trivial and pathetically small friend when compared to those you fought sea creatures with. There is a wonderful book, To Kill a Mockingbird, in which this point is illustrated quite well (this book is little known to most children today, besides those of you who are in the ninth grade, perhaps). Little Scout Finch - the story’s child protagonist - is sitting at the kitchen table, and as she is grumbling over her meal, the young boy Dill who visits his aunt over the summers comes strolling in. Dill is in his usual high spirits as he begins to speak lofty things about his father, saying such things as, “My daddy was a railroad man until he got rich, and now he flies airplanes.” At these words young Scout begins to show greater distaste than she did for the meal she was grumbling over. Scout clearly does not care for anything that Dill, or much less his father, has ever done or will do; she has bigger things to busy herself with, such as playing with her older brother Jem, or not being eaten by Boo Radley down the street. So it was with many of our imaginary friends as children - for they often cast long shadows in our minds that our school friends and their fancy hobbies could not even begin to match.

It seemed then that it was also our imaginary friends that knew us best, and knew how to put a smile on our faces like no one else. You see, this world is rather cruel and relentless, much like Middle-Earth or Narnia - only worse. It would be naïve to say that children are always kind and friendly, or that the schoolyard is always a safe place, because they are not and it isn’t. It is in our early years that our cruelty is either corrected or perfected. Friends that did not exist except within our imaginations were often kinder and closer to us than those more real people. I suspect this to be a great reason as to why we have imaginary friends to begin with: because they cannot hurt us or leave us like the others can. Our imaginations as children were often a daunting and scary place, full of strange lands and vile creatures that would sooner squash us into jelly than invite us in for dinner; but these monsters were harmless as doves when compared to the school bully, an abusive parent, or the mean girl only a few lockers down.

Even as children we became well aware that others cannot always be depended on or even trusted. We then “made up” friends within our minds that could be both depended upon and trusted without exception when our school friends were either busy with trumpet lessons or their paper route. Our imaginary friends were the ones who waited on us for a change, and they always seemed so happy to do so. Indeed, their apparent happiness served as the foundation for our own childlike joy - a joy that ripples into adulthood in the form of sweet nostalgia. Perhaps Dostoevsky was right:

“You must know that there is nothing higher, or stronger, or sounder, or more useful afterwards in life, than some good memory, especially a memory from childhood, from the parental home. You hear a lot said about your education, yet some such beautiful, sacred memory, preserved from childhood, is perhaps the best education. If a man stores up many such memories to take into life, then he is saved for his whole life.”

Now, I do not mean to make all children out to be villains. For while some children are certainly vipers in diapers, there are others that are cut from the good cloth, so to speak, and these friends may have even shared in these many adventures with us. Their imagination linked arms with ours, and suddenly our two worlds collided to form something that was in fact quite unique and special; that secret world, that place where our fantastical world touched the borders of their own. I do believe we all had such dear friends as these when we were young boys and girls, those friends who were content to leave the soccer field behind and instead journeyed to distant lands with us, and of course, with our imaginary friends. It was quite like the Narnia stories; only instead of Lucy, Edmund, Peter and Susan, it was you and your friend from the schoolyard that found themselves lost in a world far more enchanting and dangerous than their own. Two young souls wandering a place that was far from this world and far from home; yet, in a very real way, did it not seem at times to be more like home than this world? This world was awash with gray and had many rough edges and was either filled with angry people or worse still, very sad people; but that other world made sense, it had a warmth and comfort about it that this world often seemed to lack. Though, just like the young children in the Narnia books, there always comes a time when the dinner bell rings and we must return home to this world before it gets too late and supper gets too cold.

—

At some point or another, our bodies begin to change and with them so do our appetites and interests. We hang up our capes and crowns and sheath our swords or our space blasters because we foolishly think that to tickle our imaginations is to be childish again. We misinterpret the apostle Paul’s words when he says, “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.” We tend to forget the former things because that is what this world says sensible adults ought to do. We become embarrassed by our imaginary friends’ swords and pelts and treasure chests strewn across the room and insist that they be cleaned up or else they shall be cast out into the cold wilderness. For the real guests are on their way and what would they think if they saw all this childish nonsense. We forget those friends from other worlds. We leave them waiting for us by the warmth of a fire with no intention of returning, and we instead settle for the things of this world: work, taxes, and oil changes.

Though, the road of adulthood isn’t entirely void of creativity or imagination, it just presents itself in different ways, and we soon make new friends that are from a place beyond our world. I am speaking of course of those characters we meet in the pages of books or in films. These folk are much like our imaginary friends of old, for in the same way they do not exist and yet we still share affection for them and they take us on many exciting adventures. When they are happy, we also will share in that joy; and if something bad happens to these characters or worse yet, they die, we then mourn them as though they were indeed a real part of our world. Perhaps there is a realm beyond our own world where all these fantastic folk gather; our childhood friends and the legends of fiction coming and going from the same place, in and out of our lives. I suppose the greater characters - the ones worth knowing like Gandalf, Indiana Jones, and Atticus Finch - are the ones that break the fetters and make their way onto the pages of novels or the big screen while the lesser of them must be content to play with us as children, and only then as our imaginary friends. 

It is in the pages of a stirring book, or on the big screen, that we perhaps catch a glimpse of those old imaginary friends of ours. For though it has been so very long since we’ve seen their faces or heard their voice, there is something in the eyes of these larger than life characters in books and movies that catches our imaginations once again; as though we only just caught the whisper of a voice calling us back to the charcoal fire. 

I would suspect that it would do us some good if we set the things of this world aside for just a moment, maybe even an hour, and went back to that charcoal fire. I am confident that when you go back you will see that the fire has cooled, perhaps with only an ember aglow, but still very much alive, needing only a twig or two to get it roaring again. And there you will see smiles on familiar faces once again; perhaps slightly older and grayer than you remember them, for they have grown older and grayer just as you have. The faces of those imaginary friends from long ago, still waiting by the fireside for you to come home from school.