I wonder sometimes how to explain the importance of imagination to my kids, family, and friends. Well - how important is it? To me, imagination is the best possible weapon against a small, narrow mind. If you're reading this, I can guess you've probably encountered them somewhere in your life's journeys. In practical terms, your imagination is your mind's ability to grasp the realm of the possible. To see a thing and think it through, to understand its implications, uses, and potentials. More importantly, to create something altogether new and previously unseen. Imagination's counterbalance, wisdom, is what you've learned works, and what doesn't - usually through trial and error. Together these make up our mental bandwidth to process the world - and they govern our ability to not only survive, but to make our life better, be happy, get richer, get more stuff, find that special other person - whatever your goals happen to be. Whether consciously defined or not, goals are the product of our imagination. In the same sense however, we are fettered by the bounds of our imagination, a prison we cannot see until we look through the lens of another's imagination, and grow richer for it. The serenity of balance is simply to imagine at all, and confident use of wisdom to test the products of our imagination. I pity those who only live in the 'real' world.
Realizing I've not been posting much lately - which in turn makes me realize that colocating all of my hobby stuff with my computer probably wasn't the smartest move. Add in an impertinent girl-child who refuses to play Super Dungeon Explore until I get the figures painted in all their chibi goodness and I've not been doing much more than reading a lot of blogs, playing Orcs Must Die (such a great game!), and working on non-Tyranid figures not enough to get a game in yet. If only my imagination weren't an utter slave to my short attention span.
When I was little, I tried to construct a space ship out of old wood I found behind my mother's barn. Silly? Maybe, maybe not. After all, it and other childhood flights of fancy inspired me to become a speculative fiction writer. Imagination is the possession I prize the most, and I never apologize for having an active mind. Thanks so much for sharing this insightful post, Ghostin. :)
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