Over the course of the years, schools and universities have cut funding for the arts. Art majors are drastically underemployed. Creativity is viewed as a joke. Illegitimate. A talent reserved for free time on the weekends. Not real work.

But this is what happens when you take away a paintbrush.

Imagine waking up on a fall day, with red, orange and yellow in the trees. Where it's winter in the shade and summer in the sun.

Imagine the person you love the most in this world smiling and laughing.

Imagine a bookshelf filled with your favorite books.

A wall adorned with your favorite paintings.

Your favorite colors.

Imagine what you would invent if you had no limitations.

Imagine a home with Brahms playing on an almost-out-of-tune piano. Deep and striking.

Imagine what red feels like or what would be blue if you shut your eyes.

Imagine the light reflecting off of the walls and mirrors. A soft pillow. Warm arms.

Imagine the small moments that make up your life.

When you take away a paintbrush, the leaves drain to a murky gray and it is neither cold nor warm. The smiles fade and the laughter is lost. Your books turn to blank pages and the colors fade off of your walls. No one invents or discovers. No pioneers exist and we don't care for one another. There is only silence in an empty house. There is no light or spectrums reflecting. The pillows are not soft and arms, not warm.

And life is bled of all meaning.

When you take away a paintbrush, we cease to make the world as it could be, we only accept it as it is. Nothing to strive for or create. Nothing to discover.

I have been laughed at or mocked many times for what I know to be true. That humankind cannot survive on numbers and facts. Observational data. Conventionality and practicality. We are not confined to those things, because we are so much more.

We are the feeling of fresh paint across a canvas. The oneness of fingers and piano keys. The words across a paper. The characters in plays. The beauty that is created for the sake of being beautiful.

When you take away a paintbrush, and fill that void with formulas or facts, something is forever lost to us.

As it were, I'm not diminishing the importance of math, technology or science. I know that the world would cease to be without them and their importance is too vast to be measured.

But we already know that.

What we fail to recognize is the importance of art. Dance. Music. Creativity and innovation.

And I fear that when paintbrushes are removed from schools. From daily life. From our households. From importance. That our children will not live up to their full potentials and neither will we. That we won't be able to feel as deeply or to understand the world around us in something other than what we see.

Because when you take away a paintbrush, it's true that life will go on and the world will still turn like it is predicted to for the next millennia and we will still wake up every morning and do our jobs and laugh with our friends and love our families.

But when you take away a paintbrush, we will never again be able to grasp why.