Imagination will take you
Fan dancers and stilt walkers celebrate Chinese New Year in San Francisco, 2004
“Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.”
– Albert Einstein
Logic is important and even indispensable, but imagination is what gives life its brightest colors. Often we equate imagination with fantasy and escapism, although its most common and useful purpose is to add flair to everyday life. Think of your happiest moments, and you’ll likely find that imagination plays a role in that joy. Anticipation, memory, humor, enjoyment, creativity and understanding all require at least a little imagination. Today, I hope we can allow our imagination to transform our attitudes and enliven our activities.
- Posted in: Uncategorized
- Tagged: celebration, color, creativity, enjoyment, fantasy, imagination, storytelling
Defeat Despair 
What a happy scene! Imagination gives color to life. Logic guides us in using imagination. Julia, hope Jeff is feeling better. And your morning going well. Blessings.
Hi, thanks for asking about Jeff; he’s better, but still not back to where he was before Thursday. At least he’s up walking around now and hopefully will be able to eat more soon. When we lived in CA, I loved going to Chinatown because all the colors were so bright, especially on holidays like Autumn Moon or New Year’s. I could spend the day there and it wouldn’t take much imagination to feel as if I’d been to China. Thanks for visiting here today!
True. It’s all in our head. Imagination can create wonders. More than the real incidents it is our intrepretations that distress us. So why not interpret them in a positive way? Good point.
Bindu, that’s exactly what I’m trying to do lately – change the way I see things. When my computer crashed, my husband said “Well, look at it this way, now you don’t have to catch up on all those emails in your Inbox!” Thanks for visiting here!
Beautiful photo. I wish we could have come while you were living so near to San Fran. We must plan a trip there to the Dickens fair. 🙂 I am back from CO and I am imaging a cup of tea with my friend one day soon. Love ya.
Amy, so happy you are back! How is your mom doing? Keep Jeff in your prayers, he’s been very sick since Thursday. He’s some better now, but still worse off than I have seen him for years. He’s afraid he might not be able to do chemo next week if things don’t improve. I’ll try to call you soon and work out a day for us to get together. Thanks for checking in here.
This is a nice companion piece to the Mr.Rogers video. I have watched that video several times. It seems sometimes we trivialize imagination as day dreaming, but really when you hear stories like J.K. Rowling waiting for a train in Subway on a layover coming up with the original idea for the “Harry Potter” series. She tells this story in an NPR interview somewhere.
And I wonder if our educational system at times does not encourage imagination.
Mike, I agree that imagination is very important, and I think that too much canned, videotaped entertainment (whether it be computer games, “educational” videos or whatever) has discouraged imagination both in school and outside of it. Reading is the ultimate exercise in imagination, in the sense that one has to re-create the story in one’s own mind, and no two people will visualize the same story in quite the same way. I love good movies, but they do all the imaginative work for us. I don’t know how much time today’s kids have for what we used to call “make believe” play, but many of them seem so over-scheduled nowadays.
Julia, I read your comments daily in our cyber UR chapel. I admire your faith and courage! An artist friend and I will be leading an imagination workshop at church soon. I will use your post here today to start my part of the session if that’s ok with you? We will not know how many we will have until the day, but our plan is to divide into two groups. One will write a story with me, one will create via medium with my artist friend. We will then switch and the art group will write a story about their art, the story group will illustrate their story. Can you see any major flaws in this plan?
My prayer is for your strength. May you find the blessing in all that happens. I pray for Jeff’s healing, body, soul, and mind. Well, I pray that for us all!!
In Christ,
Patricia
Patricia, I think that workshop sounds wonderful and I would be honored if you would use my post. Also maybe you could use the video from PBS about growing ideas in the garden of the mind, which I linked in a recent post. If you want to send me the church address, or yours, I can send you some little cards to give out that have my blog URL on them in case anyone wants to check it out. I find that exploring other blogs is a great jump-start to creativity and imagination; I’ve been blown away by the talent that is out there in the blogosphere. Thanks so very much for your prayers and good wishes. I really believe we are surviving on the strength people are sending our way. I’m so glad you visited here today!
I agree completely. Logic is crucial to survive in this world, but I think some people place too much emphasis on it. I think if more of us were willing to sacrifice logic in order to imagine more possibilities, we’d have solved many problems a long time ago.
Thanks, Katie. I remember hearing years ago that authors such as Jules Verne were more accurate in imagining the future than scientists were in predicting it. I don’t know if that’s true, but reading books like 1984 and Brave New World I began to see where that might be true.
Julia,thinking of you and hoping some fresh air and sunshine are part of the healing for Jeff today. We left our WillowTree campground to venture into N. Myrtle Beach for the St. Patrick’s day festivities with friends .Bill enjoyed himself! Imagination…. I think Barney said (sang) it so well with “Just Imagine”! A great reminder of time spent with grandchildren! Sheila
Hi Sheila, I’m too old for my children to have watched Barney, and don’t yet have grandchildren, so I missed the Barney craze. But I know he was a big purple dinosaur who looked a bit like a T Rex but was friendly, so somebody gave imagination free rein there! Have a blast for St. Pat’s.
Imagination is what allows us to continue evolving as a culture. Without imagination, we wouldn’t have a way to change or enhance our lives. It’d be ‘Groundhog Day’, same thing over and over again. Children are so good at using their imaginations with careless abandon, it’s good to keep a little of that attitude in your back pocket, even as a grownup.
I think one reason I don’t end up doing as much with my crafts as I would like to, is that I try to make everything so perfect and hate to make mistakes. When I was first doing scrapbooks a friend helped me with this – I cut a photo wrong and she said “just put it in there like that, it will remind you of this day when we were doing scrapbooks together and you were still learning how — it will be a funny memory!” She’s right, I probably remember making that page more than any other I did before or since! I need to focus more on experimenting with my craft supplies and not try to do everything the same way all the time.
I’m late in responding to this post, but when I read it on Sat it was SO needed! A simple yet powerful reminder to not take ourselves so seriously. A pit I was falling into from life’s curve balls lats week. Thank you, Julia!
You are welcome, JD; I’m so glad you liked it!