Imagination is more important than knowledge.
Imagine Winter and Spring suddenly changing its usual face.
Suddenly all the habits of every people had to adapt to the pandemic.
We would never have imagined such a thing, yet in this case, thanks to imagination, we were saved from such severe restrictions.
An unimaginable closure of the world at every level, in every language, in every society.
Locked in our homes, locked in every move, confined within four walls and forced not to see friends, acquaintances and relatives, the brain began to elaborate new ways of living by imagining.
We start from this extreme situation to ask ourselves: is it possible to train the imagination?
Albert Einstein said: Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.
How to let your imagination fly?
Attention please, is not daydreaming about the near future.
Especially in this time of pandemic, we can’t imagine a future.
It depends on how the virus affects world health and how doctors will be able to stop it in the absence of a vaccine.
This is about imagining every single day in all its aspects.
Imagine that the balcony is a garden, imagine that the living room is a television studio from which we can connect via streaming with others, imagine that we are at an exhibition and instead we visit a museum only on the net.
The much-vaunted world of the web saved us from panic and offered us new scenarios. Our imagination has supported the sense of panic, the fear of the virus, the anxiety of being blocked.
We have reshaped our everyday life. We imagined living as before but in new spaces and times and inevitably we started to change. Temporary or not, we don’t know yet.
Imagination is therefore a prerequisite of our human life and it is still a creative act.
But creativity and imagination walk together?
Imagination produces ideas, thoughts, images in our minds. We imagine dialogues, situations, epilogues, stories.
But without creativity, it does not develop in reality.
What we imagine gives rise, if we want, to something concrete.
We are all able to imagine, as we are all able to create.
And creating means putting a thought into practice.
The creative act is not only the artistic act in the strict sense, but anyone of us is able to transform any passion or work thanks to our ability to implement thoughts and make them manifest to others.
Can we develop the imagination?
Yes, like all things, it requires commitment, perseverance, effort, application.
Those who make art use their imagination to explore thoughts in the form of artistic products. An artist takes different elements already known and re-elaborates them in a new way, making things known in works new to the eye.
A scientist thinks, asks him/herself questions, looks for answers, experiments, accumulates heterogeneous data that he/she will then re-elaborate into a scientific discovery.
To imagine in this first phase, is essentially not to follow a logic but to leave room for free associations that can give rise to new scenarios.
Leaving the imagination free to wander, leads to discover, invent, create anything.
Once a good number of ideas and hypotheses have been put together, however, a method intervenes. personal or not. Without a method, you don’t organize ideas and you only get a set of unconnected mental images.
Imagining, reasoning, reshaping thought, putting together different ideas, are the prelude to creating.
So scientists and artists have imagination? Of course, both have to rework, channel, light new ideas. Nothing is discovered without imagination. Methods and results change, but in both, imagination is fundamental.
Is there imagination in everyone?
In every human being the imagination exists and can be developed.
Without imagination, there is no creativity.
Without the practical act, creativity does not develop.
Without the ability to get out of clichés, out of schemes, out of preconceptions, creativity is just an exercise without originality.
Imagining has to do with our cultural heritage every day.
What seems new and innovative to us is perhaps the result of our culture.
Something that we have seen, read, listened to, buried in our brain, becomes something fresh and new.
But is it true? I would say no, it becomes something new only if we rework it into something different.
Train your imagination
- Take two completely different situations and try to build something that ties them together
- Get a work of art you hate and try to understand why
- Look for as many solutions as possible to a problem as if it were a treasure hunt, imagine different scenarios with different solutions
- Take two words at random and create a fictional tale
- Take three objects and turn them into something different
- Look at a photograph from a newspaper and imagine the situation at the moment, what the protagonists are doing and why they are there
- Close your eyes and touch an object, through touch imagine the shape, the color and the surface
- Draw randomly the dots on a sheet of paper and then with the pen connect them together trying to find a shape that resembles an object
- Imagine how to recycle a broken object
- Observe two or more details from a window (a man walking, a woman at the window, a truck, a passing bird) and try to imagine possible scenarios
- Try to think with someone else’s head, come out of your own mind and your own way of reasoning
What does it take to imagine?
Curiosity is an excellent partner of the imagination.
Wondering why things and how and when, they are excellent stimulators of imagination.
Ask yourself questions, try to understand, ask yourself problems and then try to solve them.
Imagination is to create a short circuit, change connections, give space to the impossible, let thought flow without blocking it.
Exercising the imagination every day of our lives will surely make us more ready for creativity.
But it would be a useless act to imagine, if it were not then poured into something concrete, whether it be our work, our hobby, art and so on.
Even one’s personal life, strengthened by imagination, can change radically and we can do unthinkable things.
The great thinkers, the great visionaries, started from their imagination.
Talent alone, would not have gone far without imagination.
Therefore, imagination is the most revolutionary and indispensable act for every human being.
In the e-book you can download HERE, there are some suggestions.
It is a choral and international work that we developed during the quarantine, when imagination was indispensable to our survival.
Download it if you want to change your life routine: besides being interesting, it’s also fun.
