Albert Einstein says about 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 to know and understand.”
I have often wondered if there is a "right" amount of imagination we are supposed to use: he/she has too little imagination, he/she has too much imagination, wild imaginings, lack lustre imagination, etc. etc. are commonly used terms. If there is a right amount of imagination we are supposed to use, if so, then how is such determined and by whom?
Is imagination "good" when applied to certain areas and not so good in others?
Ex: Your partner/friend/child/etc. is late. You try to reach them on the phone but no one picks up.
Two hours pass and still no word. By this time some of us may be panicked, ready to call hospitals, check traffic reports etc. Yet some of us will not, we may simply conclude that there is a perfectly reasonable explanation for the delay and go about our business.
Another scenario: there is a problem that refuses to go away, you have tried everything you can think of to resolve it, but nothing has worked. Finally you decide to talk to someone else about it and that someone else listens and then says, "-Hmm, but what if you look at it from this angle instead, is it not possible that............?" Suddenly it dawns on you that looking at the problem from this previously not considered angle, opens up the possibility for other solutions.
Imagination can conger up monsters, mountains out of molehills, disasters, deadly diseases, betrayals, accidents, ...the list goes on....especially for those of us with a vivid imagination, but imagination can also discover new methods, new medicines, new therapies, new art works, new technologies, and so on.
Ken Robinson, Ph.D., and author of "The Element" has this to say: "imagination is the act of bringing things into conscious that aren’t here".
Is imagination like a muscle; use it or lose it, or do we use our imagination without even knowing we are doing so every time we think?
In dreams, the imaginative input is obvious, but what about other areas,... such as assumptions?
"Why is he late? "Oh, he is probably just got caught up in traffic."
When we assume, we imagine possibilities, we fill in the blanks.
What about when we analyse something? We use our imagination to figure out the next logical step.
In most things we do, we use our imagination to fill in the spaces where we lack data.
Our knowledge creates the framework for our thoughts, and imagination does the rest.
Just for fun, let's play a game.
Let your imagination run wild when you read the following words, make a story to go with the words: moonlit beach in the Bahamas, rain forest, open road, snow, beach hut, big city at night, wild horses, autumn in Paris.....
That was a warm up, now see if you can connect three un-related words into a cohesive image:
ex: chair - pie - lamp = the pie is on the chair lit up by a lamp
funnel - rope - salt shaker = ?
matchbox - brush - water bottle = ?
sofa - beach - photo frame = ?
We do this everyday, we use our imagination to make sense out of the world we live in.
It may be that some of us have more imagination than others, and for us it may be important to realise that at times we may need to exercise some control over it.
Being late does not necessarily indicate a disaster, not hearing back from the doctor may not necessarily mean that the results are bad, someone not returning the call immediately may not necessarily mean a rejection, having a bad head ache does not necessarily mean there is a tumour, failing once does not necessarily mean always failing, and so on.
Just like we can use our imagination to scare ourselves, we can use our imagination to have hope, we can imagine the worst or best outcomes, being rejected or accepted; it seems once terms(words) are applied to what we perceive something to be, they have a tendency to create rather than assist our understanding of something.
"She hasn't called back yet, she must be angry with me." The minute the word "angry" is used, many other options tend to be ignored and our imagination get to work with the "ifs and whys" in favour over other potential possibilities.
"Can I please see you in my office?" may start an avalanche of imaginings of mistakes made if the word "mistake" enters the mind when asked the question.
Isn't it amazing that with imagination, although we can use it to conger up all sorts of awful, we can also use it to conger up all sorts of wonderful. That is a freedom we all have, whether we choose to use it or not.
"You have to imagine it possible before you can see something. You can have the evidence right in front of you, but if you can't imagine something that has never existed before, it's impossible."
(Rita Dove)
"I saw the angel in the marble and I carved until I set him free." (Michelangelo)
"I paint objects as I think them, not as I see them." (Pablo Picasso)
"Every human has four endowments - self awareness, conscience, independent will and creative imagination. These give us the ultimate human freedom... The power to choose, to respond, to change."
(Stephen Covey)
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