Imagination

Imagine one day you reached into your bag, and happened to pulled out a tiny green, scaly creature you believe and know to be a dinosaur. What next? You’d have to actually ‘imagine’ wouldn’t you? So what exactly is this ability of imagination.. Some of you may have started thinking: “well that’s for kids”. But changing that manner of thinking is my goal here, so I hope you’ll bear with me.

If I may be so bold, I define imagination as the ability to travel to another world, complete with its own set of principles and possibilities, so uniquely ours to borrow ideas of creativity that adds not only a whole new dimension to the world we live in but also dares us to venture past any sense of hopelessness.

Relive with me our childhood; the days we spent occupying ourselves with only our hands for guns, or sticks for swords, and a mind full of infinite leisure. When anyone our age no matter the socio-economic status, religion or language became our best friend, or partner in crime. And then we grew up to a world of books (unless you had cable) where we cherished the scent of the pages of a new book, when we eagerly and secretly read through the night under a blanket with a torchlight, and wished (oh how much we wished!) we were one of the characters in the story. Just to get a glimpse of this world that the author had painted so wonderfully in our mind, where dreams do come true and rabbits wear waistcoats.

How we so deeply immersed ourselves with wanting to be one of the famous five, or have a magical finger, or couldn’t sleep for a whole night because R.L Stine petrified us with ‘the headless ghost’, how we longed to find a magical rabbit hole in the forest, to chill out with archie and the gang, or to fly on buckbeak’s back above Hogwarts…

Unfortunately, such thinking is not encouraged in most schools in India. But I will not dwell further on that as it would be article of its own.

I must say I find it very annoying when I walk into a bookstore and all the authors I admire for their ability to stretch their imagination as vast as an ocean are neatly fitted into the kids section.

But tell me what would science be without imagination? Most of physics only makes sense if we imagine. If you look back at most of the greatest scientific discoveries, they came either out of a ridiculous, spontaneous thought or because people dared to ask ‘what if?’

Take a look at medical- related discoveries. Tetralogy of fallot was a hopeless condition before 1944 until two surgeons dared to try out an anastomosis between the subclavian and pulmonary artery.

This is the core of my debate: to suppress the will to imagine is suicide to any hope of creative progress; and without that we could never hope of making a difference in this world.

So take a leap back in time, and go back to the days when our only responsibility was saying bye to our parents before leaving the house to play.. Encourage your mind to see what fascinated you as a child, and it would enable you to not only look past problems you thought were big but realize that you can do so much more to sever the problems of people around you.

Perhaps that why progress in all streams of life have come to a stagnant phase for a while.. at least, that’s what I’ve inferred from the songs and movies that come out these days. Except technology of course. My theory is that this one field which strives to make our lives more comfortable and longer only to replace the necessity and passion for hard work thereby ironically actually shortening life (based on the fact that non communicable diseases are almost the leading causes of morbidity these days).

What did you want to become growing up? I assume most of those answers would not have included an engineer or a charted accountant... I personally wanted to be a barber, or an author. One of my childhood friends wanted to be an ice cream man. And why not? Cause we’ve been too lazy to follow through with it and have allowed ourselves to be pressurized into falling for what the world thinks is success. I know some people who wanted to be an engineer but didn’t like physics... Does that make any sense to you?

So I hope you take this journey with me, and venture into an unknown world full of excitement and wonder. Let your mind break free from all the restraints you thought you had and experience something strange, daring and most of all: satisfying. Let your inner child run around tweaking your thoughts, a little here and a little there, just enough to make you smileJ

Eric Williams