I picked imagination because that's what's needed to explore the best topics.The fact that we believe we live in a world that has it all figured it out is absurd. Short answer is, we don’t. Imagination allows us gather a perspective on the unknown. You can call it being a dreamer but I like to think of it as more of being open minded. Every day, something more is discovered about the world around us that changes our perspective about the world around us.
Imagination is a beautiful thing.
The power of thought and beyond. Imagination has crafted our entire world. Good and bad. The bad being a learned behavior as we grow but as a child, their imaginations run wild with images of far off places and far off things. Any story you’ve ever thought of was crafted in the world of imagination first then brought to life thru much effort. Sure, you might be thinking to yourself, “cool, but that’s a story”.
Think of the iPhone, or the internet, or even electricity. These were all thought up in imagination first and then discovered along the way. Everything we have, even this recording I’m talking thru, start in imagination first. Because that is the realm we humans go to explore. It allows us to see things that can be seen in no other area. Whether it be fanciful creations or far off lands.
The fact is, you actually don’t know if those places are real or not. Imagine with me, we are one planet amongst billions of trillions of planets. Bipedal human like beings with pointy ears isn’t exactly that crazy to be real. If you think that’s impossible, then I say to you that you lack imagination.
I’d wager to assume that until you can imagine a billion different planets just like earth, all with they’re own vast planetary history, you can’t tell me anything is impossible. Sure, there are things that don’t happen in our lives or even our world. But that’s not say it’s not happening somewhere.
Point is, while children we’re told nothing was impossible and at some point in our lives, a lot of us got jaded and fatigued from life, forgetting that very precious rule. Sure, even the adults who were telling our child versions of ourselves probably didn’t believe a word of it but I’m here to tell you that it’s okay to believe in the infinite possibilities of our imagination.
It’s something okay to be in awe of your own imagination. In fact, I dare to say that without, the world will become a very stale and boring place. Think about a world with no new ideas. Nothing changes. No one tries to create something never before seen… That sounds terrible.
Even if our world is little messed up the way it is, it’s ever changing. People are imagining possibilities every single step. The next Elon Musk is probably playing with a battery powered toy right now as they imagine the wonder of their own mind. That’s a beautiful thing.
Sure, imagination can be a dark place too but I like to imagine (see what I did there?) that it’s a neutral place. A place that can hold the most beautiful dreams or the most vicious nightmares.
It’s all about controlling the space you’re in. An interesting trait of Nickola Tesla was his ability to completely build an invention within his mind. Test the theory, retest, make changes, check fault tolerances, all inside his head. He created such space inside of his imagination that he could picture completely made up ideas with millimeters of scale. That’s a powerful tool. He basically had his own virtual software program within his own head.
I believe an ability like that isn’t so hard to create. It’s all about learning to maintain a coherent picture and relaying that to the real world over and over until you can successfully imagine a general scale. Eventually, thru years of practice, I bet you could get pretty close. He had been honing that skill his entire life.
Check out the first episode of my podcast here.