Harvey

The other day Christy and I watched the original 1950 version of the movie Harvey all the way through for the first time.  Like most movies prior to Lucas and Spielberg, the pacing seemed pretty slow.  Modern media and entertainment really like to have flashes, loud noises and/or dead bodies available for your viewing pleasure within the first few seconds.  I think the theory is that if they really stun you, you'll be too numb to press the channel up/down button. (You can see the trailer for the movie here:  Harvey trailer.)

The trailer voice over says words to the effect of, '..."Harvey" shows the power of the imagination.'  I'm guessing from the content and sound quality that it is of more recent vintage than the original footage.  I imagine the trailer production people felt they had to say that in case someone got confused and thought that maybe the intent of the movie was to assert that Harvey was real. After all, that would just be too weird.  The "power of imagination" is one possible take of course but I think you'd have to sleep through a lot of the movie to adopt that idea.  I think the point of  "Harvey" speaks more to the nature and values we choose and express when we imagine.

If you can read this, you have an imagination.  Therefore, imagination is real and as common as human beings.  Of course, not everything we imagine is real and, pretty clearly, that's a good thing.  However, there's more reality in imagination than we commonly think.

Consider that the chair you're sitting in, the engineering and manufacturing of the paper or computer screen you're reading and in fact all science and all created things, existed as imagination before they became reality.  (That's Plato if you're taking notes.  While he's wrong about a few things, he's right about that.)

Mostly, the reason imagination gets shoved to the side and maybe unfairly devalued, is that we're too often too busy with day to day "reality."  We have to get places and do things.  Often times we let our minds wander when we're queuing up or otherwise waiting to do the next thing on our list of very important stuff to do.  That's a time when our imagination kicks in, usually in a completely undirected way.  As soon as the next "do" arrives, we kick imagination to the curb like someone we'd be embarrassed to be seen with.  Imagination's a clever guy though and instead of falling out of the car, he just sort of opens and slams the door and then jumps in the back seat when we're not looking.  (I think sometimes he even hunkers down a bit.)  We think we've gotten rid of him but he'll scramble back into the front seat if we ask him and often even if we don't.

In the movie, Elwood (Jimmy Stewart) is the friend of a 6 foot 3.5 inch Pooka in the form of a rather nattily attired rabbit. (Gratuitous movie trivia question: how can Harvey's tastes in attire be proved?) Of course because it's a movie and needs a plot, initially no one but Elwood can see the beast.  "Pooka's" it turns out are a common thing in Celtic folk mythology.

I'll bet you're having a reflex, unconscious reaction just now, that distances you from the assumed irrelevance of all things Pooka.  It goes something like this:  "Oh yeah, that was what all those primitive people believed before there was science that helped us know things."  It's OK.  I still think battle that thought even though I know better.

The sad thing about that reaction is that it doesn't just distance us from Pooka's.  It distances us from all the many places that our imagination intersects with reality.  In turn, that deprives us of large pieces of ourselves and even of reality.

There are dangers of course.  Things that live in the border land between imagination and reality aren't all good.  Some Pookas can show up as hungry, killing lions.  (I have another story about that but it's not for now.)  However, there are pretty straight forward tests for good vs. bad, even though we too often want to discount them.  Here's one yardstick:  You know the good/bad core nature of something by the fruit it produces.  If healing, completion, fulfillment and peace regardless of circumstance are the fruit, then the thing is good.  If self gratification at the expense of others, pain and eventual tragedy is the fruit, then the thing is bad. That one's primarily for people who follow Christ.  However, it seems close to being universally true.

Another one strictly for followers of Christ is when he says:  "My sheep know my voice."  Jesus didn't lie.  As a bit of a side note, he also really didn't get into much theology unless one of the Pharisees asked him a "gotcha" question.  Point being, there isn't a lot of varnish on that phrase.  It means what it says.

In this presidential campaign season, let me guess at what you're thinking right now and respond with Reagan's great comeback from the presidential campaign of 1980:  "There you go again."  (Even if you're not thinking it, at least I can imagine that you are.)   The objection in your mind may be something like "That's scary because I remember when so-and-so said he heard God telling him to divorce his wife, marry a 19 year old and 'be happy.'"  That sort of self delusion can be confused with imagination, but I think only with a great degree of disingenuousness on the part of the delude-ee.  In this example, imagination takes an unfair rap for what is actually a desperate soul out to deflect blame for doing something he knows is wrong.  His imagination didn't deceive him at all.  He set out to be self-indulgent and destructive and subsequently went looking for an accomplice that couldn't be called to testify against them.

By the way, there's a very good retort for anyone who has a self-serving, delusional imaginary construct along the lines of "I did <name whatever bad thing> because God wanted me to."  Here it is:  "No he didn't.  God doesn't do that."

I won't give away the movie and tell you whether or not Harvey was real.  I can't because the movie doesn't really give it away either, even up to and including the closing credits.  However, there isn't any doubt that imagination is real and that it is an absolutely essential part of who we are.  We were designed with it as an absolutely essential part of us...if you choose to believe that sort of thing.