A Week of Wonder Part 7 – Imagination

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be know and understand.”

- Albert Einstein

“You see things; and you say, ‘Why?’ But I dream things that never were; and I say, ‘Why not?’”

- George Bernard Shaw

I was reading recently about a process called Scripting. If a situation isn’t going how you like you choose to re-write it. You pretend you have a magic pencil, and as you put it to paper, whatever you write will be performed.

I’ve also heard about this being done with Storyboards. You cut out pictures and words from magazines, print them out from your computer or draw them yourself. Then you glue them all to posterboard or into a journal. You start to imagine what your ideal world would look like. You surround yourself with those images. You create your own reality. Whatever is pasted here, IS. You call it into being. Imaginative thought becomes reality. It is true that for anything to ever be, it must start out as a thought.

I think it’s really hard as an adult to “imaginate,” as my daughter Charis would call it. It feels like a waste of time if we can’t figure out the “how” and “when” to what we’re imagining. How’s it really going to ever come to be? When is this even realistically possible?

If you have in your mind a desire of something more for your life, then

“Give this thought to your imagination and see what your imagination can, or will, do to create practical plans.”

- Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill

In my wrestling with this world CHILDLIKE, I see the need for wonder to return to my life. I’ve touched on several different aspects of wonder this week, but I’ve left the hardest for last.

IMAGINATION 1 : the act or power of forming a mental image of something not present to the senses or never before wholly perceived in reality
2 a : creative ability b : ability to confront and deal with a problem c : the thinking or active mind
3 a : a creation of the mind

Imagining is a creative process. It is the process of an artist! It is a tool in our toolbox. One might even propose it is the most important tool in our toolbox.

How does one teach oneself to see imagination not as immature or childish, but as an absolute necessity to succeed, to flourish and to wonder? Why do we think of imagination in regards to children, but rarely in regards to adults? Why are slots not carved out in our work days for the sole (and soul) purpose of imagination?

I don’t have lots of answers on the subject because I’m still in the process of asking so many questions. I wrote this in my journal recently:

Why am I so hesitant to imagine?

• It’s not real
• It will awaken desire, before I can do anything about that desire.
• I’ll be impatient on the timing for what I imagine to become reality.
• I’ll be jaded if it doesn’t really come true.
• It’s a waste of time.
• I should be doing not imagining.
• I’ll use it as an excuse to escape responsibility of reality.
• Someone else will tell me the impossibility of it coming true
• I’ll imagine something that isn’t right for me and maybe wish I was someone else.

I have this sense that many of these reasons of mine do not hold water, but I have to go into the testing phase for myself, to convince myself imagination is worth my time.

Maybe the point in imagining is that it is training for your heart and mind. Maybe the point is not what you imagine or even if what you imagine will actually take place, but that in the process of imagining you are opening up yourself to a world that was previously impossible for you to enter. Maybe the point is to consider the impossible so that when impossibilities show themselves in real life, we are prepared to sail over them.

Tagged as: Childlike, Inspirational, self-help, wonder