Dream the Impossible Dream

The Tinkerbell Effect describes things that exist only because people believe in them. Remember Tinkerbell, the fairy in Peter Pan who is revived from near death by the belief of the audience?

[Tinkerbell has drunk the poison meant for Peter Pan.]PETER PAN: Her light is growing faint, and if it goes out, that means she is dead! Her voice is so low I can scarcely tell what she is saying. She says—she says she thinks she could get well again if children believed in fairies! [He rises and throws out his arms to the audience.] Do you believe in fairies? Say quick that you believe! If you believe, clap your hands!

And all over the world, children clapped with all their might.

The Tinkerbell Effect is responsible for the rule of law. If enough of us quit believing in it, the rule of law would cease to exist. Likewise, the value of money. A dollar has value only because we believe it does. Without our belief, dollars would be scraps of paper.

Much of who and what we are is owed to the Tinkerbell Effect.

Tinkerbell would be proud of Tommy.

Tommy is a young man who sees possibilities. Few people understand him. His home is littered with his strange inventions.

When Tommy is 28, he writes a letter to his friend, Robert Skipwith, about The History and Adventures of the renowned Don Quixote de la Mancha, a book that has captured his imagination.

In that book, Alonso Quixano sees beauty where others see only dust and grime. Then, like a little boy tying a bath towel around his neck and pretending to be Superman, Alsonso dresses himself as a knight and pretends to be Don Quixote, setting out to right all the wrongs of his day.

Tommy, too, becomes a sort of Don Quixote, seeing always a world that could be, should be, ought to be. His fascination with Don Quixote will continue throughout his life and he will mention Quixote in dozens of letters to his friends. 

Finally, when Tommy is 78 years old and looking back across the years, he writes to Benjamin Waterhouse, “Don Quixote undertook to redress the bodily wrongs of the world…”

Inspired by Quixote, Tommy likewise undertook to redress the wrongs of the world.

It was a single, glittering statement for which there was no evidence in all the world: 32 year-old Tommy, that incurable dreamer, flung the Tinkerbell Effect hundreds of years into the future and across millions of lives with 14 words full of pixie dust, “We Hold these Truths to be Self-evident, that All Men are Created Equal…”

And a nation sprang into existence.

Do you have an impossible dream? Come to Wizard Academy. The Cognoscenti will believe it with you and together, we'll make it happen.

Roy H. Williams