You are reading the ongoing writing process for a new book of daily reflections/meditations. Already published by this author is “Cast A Long Shadow”, 90 daily reading for our journey through life. This book is available direct from the publisher, and also on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk
Imagination
Having an imagination is one of the great blessings of being Human. It is also one of the curses.
Our imaginations can help us achieve great things, because if we can imagine it, we can make it happen.
Most great advances in life are the result of someone seeing how the world is, and imagining a better one.
And having imagines a better solution, or a better way of living, they have gone on to work at a way of achieving that goal, often working hard and long until their dream is fulfilled.
In seemingly lessor ways, we all use our imagination for the better.
We may look at the area around our house, and see in our imagining how it would look with different flowers and bushes.
Having thought about how it could look, we go and buy plants and seeds and dig up the old weeds we had there, ready for our new plants.
And we work at the gardening year after year, talking pleasure in our successes and learning from our failures, each year getting closer to the imagined “perfect” space.
But there is also a darker side to having an imagination.
Sometimes, when presented with a decision to make, or a task to be undertaken, we can only imagine the bad outcomes that could happen.
Or we imagine that people are whispering about us behind our backs, or are plotting against us, when this is not true.
At these times our imagination can keep us trapped.
We are afraid to move on because of the imagined problems that might happen, and yet we can see right in the here and now that our lives are far from perfect.
This imagining stops us from even trying, or of we try, makes us timorous and scared of defeat.
When we find our imagination turning on us in this way, it can be hard to change – but change we can.
Because if it is possible to imagine a bad outcome, so it is also possible to imagine a good one.
Sometimes we need to exercise our will power explicitly to stop our imaginations running the show.
And we don’t need to imagine the future at all.
All we have is now, and the future is an illusion.
