Imagine

A few weeks ago, someone at CCF spoke about imagination and vision that has really stuck with me and I thought I would share it here. (thanks Charles!)

George Bernard Shaw said: ‘Some men see things and ask why, but I dream things that never were and ask why not.’ Today we’re going to talk about dreaming of things you’re passionate about and asking why not. And at the centre of this vision, this dream is called imagination:

At the heart of imagination, is a picture, is an image; that when you think of your future, when you think of the future of your relationships, think of the future of your family, the future of your career, think when all is said and done, what is the mental picture. That is imagination.

Imagination is to the mind what the breath is to the body. Without imagination, we would be condemned to live a purely instinctive life. We would still be walking about naked, ignorant of fire, and constantly foraging for food.

Without imagination, there would be no cave art, Byzantine icons, Chinese landscape paintings, or da Vinci's Last Supper and Mona Lisa, Michelangelo's Last Judgment, or Rembrandt's portraits.

Without imagination, this writer says, we would have no pyramids, Great Wall in China, Coliseum of Rome, Taj Mahal, or Cathedral of Notre Dame, no Eiffel Tower.

Without imagination, none of would have ever read these great writers—from the Vedas of India to the Sumerian clay tablets and Egyptian hieroglyphic inscriptions, the Iliad and Odyssey, Bible, Koran, to the writings of Plato, Aristotle, Euripides, St. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Dante, Shakespeare, Chaucer, Dickens, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, without imagination none of us would ever grace those pages.

He says imagination is an incredibly power thing. He says without imagination, We would also have no ethnic drumming, Gregorian chants, Bach cantatas, no symphonies by Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, and Mozart, no piano concertos by Chopin, no operas by Wagner, no waltzes by Strauss, and no folk songs, jazz, Beatle songs, or Canadian National Anthem.

Without imagination, we would neither care for the sick and elderly nor bury our dead. We would lack all social sensitivity and compassion. We would have no thought of the great beyond and never contemplate our existence. There would be no philosophy, no psychology, no politics, and no history, linguistics, mathematics, or any of the natural sciences.

Without imagination, we will, I believe, never reach the goal and passions in our lives!

I guess I really like this because as the end of this year comes, and I'm seeing so many of my friends moving on into the next big step in their lives, be it going back to school or entering the working world, I'm reminded as well that my time at UT comes to a close soon too. I've heeded the call to return this campus and now I'm trying to discern what role God has for me on this campus, where He wants me to grow and serve. I guess this is what happens when you're on the elections committee and trying to figure out the new CCF leaders for next year... it makes me feel old and nostalgic. hahaha. But more importantly, I feel encouraged to see how God has been working in them and making them step up :)

I don't really have an concluding thought... I just really liked this piece on imagination and maybe, when I finish classes and before I head off to Peru and summer officially begins... I'll finish this off. ;)