I love fantasy; I love imagination - that's the inner child in

“I love fantasy; I love imagination — that’s the inner child in me.” Thus spoke Hannah John-Kamen, a voice from our age of film and dream, yet her words echo ancient truths that have never faded. In this simple confession lies a profound wisdom: that imagination is not mere play, but the sacred bridge between youth and eternity. To love fantasy is not to flee reality, but to remain alive to its wonder. To keep the inner child awake is to keep the soul unbroken — to resist the hardening of the heart that time so often brings. Her words, though light, are like sunlight through the leaves: they remind us that within each of us burns the same spark that once saw the world as infinite and full of magic.

The origin of this truth is as old as humanity itself. Long before ink and script, the ancients sat around fires and told stories of gods, heroes, and spirits — tales born from fantasy and imagination. They knew that through story, the soul remembers its own divinity. The child who dreams of dragons and worlds beyond the stars is not escaping life; they are practicing for it. For what is creation, if not the act of imagining something that does not yet exist and giving it form? To love fantasy, as John-Kamen does, is to honor that most human of gifts — the ability to see beyond the visible, to weave light from the void, and to call it meaning.

In the heart of every true artist, sage, and visionary, the inner child still sings. Leonardo da Vinci, who studied the flight of birds and painted the soul upon a face, carried this eternal youth within him. He never ceased to wonder, to ask “What if?” That question — simple, playful, childlike — is the root of all genius. When we lose it, we age not in body but in spirit. The child within does not merely play for amusement; it plays to explore, to learn, to imagine what could be. It is this same spirit that moves inventors, poets, and dreamers. When John-Kamen speaks of her inner child, she speaks also of that universal fire that refuses to grow cold — the imagination that keeps us becoming.

Yet many, as they grow older, cast away this sacred child. They trade wonder for logic, dreams for duty, and imagination for practicality. They call it maturity, yet it is a kind of forgetfulness. The ancients would say they have fallen asleep in the shadow of the world. The wise, however, keep both eyes open — one for the seen, and one for the unseen. They know that fantasy and imagination are not childish; they are divine instruments of vision. The inner child is not the past self but the eternal self — the part of us that believes before it sees, and therefore makes seeing possible.

Consider the story of J. R. R. Tolkien, the creator of Middle-earth. He was a scholar, a soldier, a man of intellect and discipline — yet it was the child within him that gave birth to his great works. Through fantasy, he healed from war and transformed his pain into beauty. He wrote of hobbits and elves, but his imagination was no escape from the world — it was his way of restoring faith in it. Tolkien once said that fantasy is a way of recovering the brightness of ordinary things — of seeing the world anew. That is precisely what John-Kamen means: that imagination is the vision of the heart, and the heart that can still imagine is forever young.

To love fantasy and imagination is, then, to keep faith with life itself. It is to say, “I will not let the world make me small.” The inner child within us is not naïve — it is courageous. It dares to dream when others despair; it builds castles from dust and finds stars in darkness. Those who mock fantasy have forgotten that every great change in history began as one person’s dream — every invention, every movement, every act of creation. The dreamer is the ancestor of reality.

So, dear listener, cherish your inner child. Protect it from cynicism, from weariness, from the voice that says, “Grow up.” To grow up does not mean to abandon wonder — it means to embody it with wisdom. Read stories that awaken you. Create something with no purpose but joy. Imagine as boldly as you once did when you were young, for imagination is the breath of the soul. As Hannah John-Kamen teaches, to love fantasy is to remain alive in a world that often forgets how to feel. Keep that golden fire within you, and you will never grow old — for the one who lives through imagination walks always in the realm of the eternal.