Have you been in touch with your imagination lately?

I don't mean by hatching conspiracy theories or trying to manifest wealth, "The Secret"-style. I mean, have you let your mind get real weird with zero material stakes? Have you daydreamed for no reason but the pure pleasure of it? Have you sat in the woods and imagined a deranged clown lurking behind a tree?

That might read like a cautionary tale against imagination, but stay with me. I spent a weekend at a remote cabin in North Carolina to surprise a friend for her birthday. Luckily Halloween is on the way, because this place was straight out of "Friday the 13th," Camp Crystal Lake with upgraded bedding from Hotel Sheets Direct. An ominous dinghy near a dark pond begged Jason Voorhees to burst out.

We sat around the fire listening to rustling branches and wailing wildlife. We aimed a light into the trees to look for, I guess, Art the Clown or Cthulhu. We theorized about who would get the axe first (me, being blond and all). From the creaky porch, I peered into the expanse and conceived of a coven of witches performing spells under the moon. I breathed in the night air, leaned forward and, oops, stuck my face in a very real spiderweb.

Stickiness notwithstanding, using my imagination became an unexpected treat on par with the charcuterie and low humidity. Children are allowed to exist in a state of perpetual play, but not adults. We grown-ups do not have blanket permission to access our most fanciful selves, especially not in this era of constant alarm.

Instead, we stay vigilant for truth in an ecosystem rife with misinformation. We parse unfounded claims that Tylenol causes autism, that vaccines don't work, that cities are overrun with crime. We find sad escapism via calendars and grocery lists and insurance bills. When reality overwhelms, we meditate, trying to achieve a transcendent void just long enough to return to the serious stuff.

But amid our daily spate of reading, listening, posting and unwinding, what if we mixed in one more thing?

What, I wonder, about wonder?

Before heading out to the cabin, I dropped into a class at the University of Tampa. I taught the journalism students about finding your voice. One of my go-to quotes comes from the writer Susan Orlean:

"Young children often create fabulous paintings, only to be told after they start school that real houses don't look that way. At that point, most people lose their ability to be visually creative. Truly great painting retains some element of a child's emotional authenticity. Great writing does, too."

Similarly, Albert Einstein famously said, "Imagination is more important than knowledge." I know, let's invite Einstein to 2025, right? However, he wasn't advocating for being a big dummy-pants. He was saying that facts and data are the floor; imagination is what creates a runway for discovery. Einstein called his daydreams "gedankenexperiment," or thought experiments. By picturing himself riding a beam of light, he could unlock real mysteries of the universe.

Now, I did not create a new theory of special relativity by picturing the Wendigo in the trees. But perhaps finding opportunities for imagination — resisting a phone scroll in the doctor's waiting room, driving in silence without a podcast, staying wide awake in bed an extra five minutes — can be a balm to a daily stimulus too bleatingly intense to metabolize. A study in the Journal of Positive Psychology found that engaging in "deliberate mental time travel" was linked to lower stress and more happiness.

If you're a freaky oddball like me, maybe mental time travel looks like an indulgent Halloween fantasy in the woods. But imagination can extend to visions of a more functional, peaceful world, too. In your wildest dreams, what does the ideal school system look like? What about a community garden? A charity idea that seems impossible? A political campaign, even? If we visualize something fantastic, something just out of reach, maybe we can ride the beam of light and make it real.

Stephanie Hayes is a columnist at the Tampa Bay Times in Florida. Follow her at @stephhayes on X or @stephrhayes on Instagram.

Photo credit: Steven Kamenar at Unsplash