Ted Danson is searching for the Loch Ness Monster on my TV screen (SciFi – Loch Ness). He might have found it, but we will never know for sure. Until the end of the film, that is. His character also claims to have been in search of Sasquatch (Big Foot, Yeti etc.) but never found any hard evidence that the creature existed.
Nessy, Sasquatch, Fairies, Angels.. let’s even go as far as adding God to the list – or the god or goddess of any religion, for that matter.
All these things have one thing in common: to date, there is no proof that any of them exist at all.
Would we like them to exist? I don’t think anyone would say “no”. There is something about the unknown that fascinates us, and compells some of us to spend a lifetime searching, one way or another, for conclusive answers.
So let’s say we go in search of the fairies that live at the bottom of your garden. We take a full year and camp out, spending mornings, days, afternoons and nights sitting and staring at the spot we know they will be if they are going to be anywhere at all.
After a full year, with not so much as a rustle of grass, we give up and come to the conclusion that fairies do not exist. What we should be concluding is that they don’t exist in a form that is readily seen.
Belief in the afterlife aside, can you close you eyes and see the face of someone you know well, but who has died? Can you see every line and feature of their face; every gesture that they made; every personality trait; the sound of their voice? Sure you can.
But what is it that you are seeing? Accepted, it is not actually them. It is a memory of them that you hold and can recall in a moment. But the image exists, and so it can be claimed that in one form they do, indeed, exist.
And the same for fairies. The year we spent looking for them produced no physical results, but in the same way we see the face of one departed, we can see the image of the fairy. Their form is practically unmistakable. If I showed you a classic sketch of a fairy, you would know what it was. You recall seeing one before, and you make the connection. What do you compare it with? The image that you hold in your mind. So they do exist, albeit not in the form we might like them to. They exist in our minds, in our souls. They exist because we <i.want< i=””> them to and so we create them, if only within ourselves.
These thoughts and ideas might, possibly, be made manifest, but that is not what concerns us now. What is important is that what we want to believe exists, does.
The unicorn, that we imagine to be running gracefully across a clearing in the woods. The Yeti (maybe, maybe not) who we see trudging through the snow and leaving those familiar prints behind it. Even the Jabberwocky, thanks to Lewis Carroll, exists in the minds of those who know it.
Does it matter if all these things cannot be scientifically explained away? No, because they exist right now in a place where they are most needed: in our hearts.