On Imagination
Defined.
1: the act or power of forming a mental image of something not present to the senses or never before wholly perceived in reality
2a: creative ability
b: ability to confront and deal with a problem : RESOURCEFULNESS
use your imagination and get us out of here
c: the thinking or active mind : INTEREST
stories that fired the imagination
3a: a creation of the mind
especially : an idealized or poetic creation
b: fanciful or empty assumption
Quotes.
If you fall in love with the imagination, you understand that it is a free spirit. It will go anywhere, and it can do anything. ~Alice Walker
Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine, and at last, you create what you will. ~George Bernard Shaw
What is now proved was once only imagined. ~William Blake
Everything you can imagine is real. ~Pablo Picasso
You are lucky to be one of those people who wishes to build sand castles with words, who is willing to create a place where your imagination can wander. ~Anne Lamott
I think imagination is at the heart of everything we do. Scientific discoveries couldn’t have happened without imagination. Art, music, and literature couldn’t exist without imagination. And so anything that strengthens imagination, and reading certainly does that, can help us for the rest of our lives. ~Lloyd Alexander
You need to be a little bit crazy. Crazy is the price you pay for having an imagination. It’s your superpower. Tapping into the dream. It’s a good thing not a bad thing. ~Ruth Ozeki
Your imagination, my dear fellow, is worth more than you imagine. ~Louis Aragon
I believe art is utterly important. It is one of the things that could save us. We don't have to rely totally on experience if we can do things in our imagination.... It's the only way in which you can live more lives than your own. You can escape your own time, your own sensibility, your own narrowness of vision.
Mary Oliver
Poems/Songs.
Wild Geese, Mary Oliver
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
Pure Imagination, Jackie Evancho
Come with me and you'll be
In a world of pure imagination
Take a look and you'll see
Into your imagination
We'll begin with a spin
Traveling in the world of my creation
What we'll see will defy
Explanation
If you want to view paradise
Simply look around and view it
Anything you want to, do it
Want to change the world, there's nothing to it
There is no life I know
To compare with pure imagination
Living there, you'll be free
If you truly wish to be
If you want to see magic lines
Close your eyes and you will see one
Wanna be a dream, I'll be one
Anytime you please
And please leave me one
Thoughts.
It seems I’ve been fascinated with imagination for as long as I can remember. Which only dawned on me this week at the age of 36. Why now? I’ve been working on a series to share on Instagram. I’ve called it ‘Books That Changed Me. A series’. I’ve only shared two so far.
The first one was Anne of Green Gables. You know, the orphan child who has had quite a rough go of life but uses her imagination to make life bearable. I was in awe of the way she named everything. The way she made life seem more poetic, more beautiful than it really was. I wanted to be like her, to imagine like her, to name all the trees and the places around my own home.
The second book I’ve posted is The Brain That Changes Itself. I read this nearly two decades after I read Anne of Green Gables (I’m not posting in order but as inspiration strikes). It’s a sharing of stories by neuroscientist Norman Doidge. Stories of neuroplasticity. Which is their fancy term for change. That the brain can change. Up until the turn of the century neurologists believed the brain to be static. Unchanging. They mapped it all out and said, ‘This part processes sight and sight only. This part processes hearing.’
Turns out that this isn’t the case and the brain can change to process different things. In fact, it’s utilising the power of our imagination that we can often create changes in the brain. How cool is that? So not only is imagination incredibly empowering to create more beauty in life, it’s also practical in creating the things you want in life. I could go on and on about the stories and miracles shared by Dr. Doidge, but that’s not what this was about, if you’re intrigued do and go purchase a copy of the book. It changed me. It really did.
Back to imagination. I wrote in my journal the other day, something along the lines of ;
If imagining moving your body can create nearly the same amount of physical muscle as actually working out can create -
What else can we create with the power of our imagination?
Now I’ve been ruminating on Imagination for a day or so and I went to the restaurant and there, in the middle of someone’s table was a journal with a quote on it. ‘Let your imagination run wild.’ Hence this lament. There is something in here for me. Something to be unpacked.
Imagination: the power to see something that isn’t there, yet.
Imagination: the power to create.
Imagination: the power to walk through, to plan, to ideate, to see, to make, to innovate.
Imagination: the power to write stories, make up characters, paint, sculpt, make anything artistic
What we can create in our mind’s eye is truly incredible. We can picture of times long gone. We can see our car keys in their entirety even when we can’t physically find them and we’re searching the entire house for where they’ve been placed. We can imagine hanging in a hammock by the sea on a remote island in Indonesia even if we’ve never been there before. We can see a multitude of possible futures we might live should we choose option A, B or C. We can even create brand new things that have never been seen or invented before.
Imagination is also the seat of worry. For what is worry but imagining the worst possible outcomes to a situation? That your child might come off their motorcycle, that you’ll be late to work, that you’ll lose your job and have no money to pay the mortgage and then what will you do?
All of this. All in our minds.
What then, are we to do with all of this incredible creative power? It is power. Because what we can see in our minds eye we can bring into reality. Are we then to cultivate the power of our imagination - to practice and to play so that we can create the kind of life we’d rather have than the one we are currently living. Or so that we can add more depth, more beauty to the current life we’re living?
I suppose that’s it. If we can practice seeing what we would like to see. Winning the race, getting our work in by the deadline, having the kind of bank balance we would like. That’s just the practical stuff. We could also imagine a lottery win, a business success, a windfall. I guess it comes down to this: what do you really want from this one wild and precious life of yours? What do you want to see, hear, feel, be, do, experience?
Use your imagination to come up with answers. Use your imagination to come with the imagery to these answers. Then keep focusing on it and allow it to come to life. Which is an imaginative process. You picture what it will look like out, how it will work out, what you will make, what you will do.
Imagination is part of everything we do. Not just for children, dreamer’s, artist’s or inventors (although if you’d like to be one of those most certainly cultivate your imaginative powers). It’s how we think ahead, how we plan, how we remember. So it’s beneficial for all of us to dive into imagination and use it for all it’s worth.
Be bold,
Katrina