"Imagination grows by exercise, and contrary to common belief, it is more powerful in the mature than in the young…" - W. Somerset Maugham
All creative people take imagination seriously.
We pay a lot of attention to it, we honor its power, we believe in the importance of stretching our own imagination, and using it to challenge the mindset of our audience.
All humans have imagination.
You possess the inherent capacity to be creative, simply because you possess imagination, which is the ability to form mental images. For those who believe that they “don’t have any imagination”, you just haven’t paid attention to it, and don’t recognize that you’re already using it every day. We humans, anticipate everything first in our imagination.
Why is it that we can always clearly imagine our worst fears? Or what we’d do if we won the lottery?
Yet, there’s a strange belief that it’s foolish or childish to allow your imagination any free reign outside the boundaries of perceived reality.
The author Somerset Maugham, perceived that imagination is more powerful in the mature than in the young. When we’re older, we have more life experiences, knowledge and wisdom to draw from than children do. If we combine life experience with our inner child-like playfulness, and a willingness to cross perceived boundaries, we have a great recipe for imaginative creativity.
An artist will never feel foolish about daydreaming, for we call it work.
We allow ourselves to wonder a lot and imagine how we want something to be, rather than how it is. It only requires a small tweak of the mind, and permission to let it wander. The beauty about daydreaming is that no one ever has to know you’re doing it.
Let yourself linger in that daydreaming realm. There is a great deal of fear associated with this kind of rule-breaking, but all the great innovative ideas on this planet come from that realm. All innovators are rule breakers.
Imagining something is the beginning to creating anything.
It’s also a powerful tool for getting what you want in life.
This is why imagination a serious endeavor.