A friend of mine and I have been exchanging a daily list of 5 things we’re grateful for via email. We’re now on our 7 month, and I hope we continue this for the rest of our lives. One time he listed “Imagination”.
Thinking about the meaning of imagination I begin to understand that imagination is a tool we all have access to only if we allow ourselves the luxury of time to practice it. It is a practice, like other forms of discipline.
Imagination allows us to to go places where we physically can’t go – the outer edges of the universe. Imagine.
With our imagination we have created other tools to give body to something we’ve imagined. For example, math and science to map the galaxies. With imagination we think about the possibilities of life on other planets other than our own. Statistically, scientists have hypothesized that the probability of life beyond the Milky Way is possible. So we endeavor to explore and build spacecrafts and probes and radars to reach out. “Hey, is there anybody out there?”
With imagination we can empathize and know what it’s like to be in someone else’s position – their joy, pain, sorrow, guilt, shame, contentment, dreams. It is effort to practice imagining a situation; it is a form of surrendering our ego to something beyond ourselves.
You’ve probably heard someone say “I can’t imagine…” after telling them a story that is either unbearable or unbelievable. Then you say, “It’s true. It really happened.” And the other person still can’t accept the story as a possibility. Later on, she may think further about it, and allow her imagination to go there and then start to believe in the possibility. And tendrils of sympathy may grow from empathy into believing.
Yes. Imagination is something to be grateful for.
How else could we have hope to get through this period of isolation and uncertainty. Just imagine it without having an imagination.
