You're imagining things. And that means you.
And that means now.
You may not think of yourself as a particularly imaginative person, but there, you've done it again. You've imagined something. You just imagined yourself as unimaginative. That counts as using your imagination, bro. Accept it.
But don't accept everything. Don't, for example, accept your inherent tendency to imagine negative things, unless of course you want a negative existence. Possible I suppose. Don't ignore the fact that you often imagine the worst about everyone, including yourself. Is it any wonder, really, that you're tense, anxious, depressed, bored, fed up, frustrated, and "a' that and a' that" (as Bobbie Burns would have it)? See, your mind is powerful; your way of framing events is key to the way you respond to them. Use your imagination intelligently, old pal. If you want to hate everything, imagine a despicable cosmos. If you want to love everything, imagine that just beneath the surface of despicability (a real word!), there must exist a lovable reality.
Getting spiritual now, what I really wanted to say this morning is that faith and imagination go hand in hand, as any atheist will tell you; and she (blink, refocus, it's just a random pronoun) would be right.
To believe, you must imagine. Or at any rate it helps. So try that today. Try believing in something you can imagine, which is not the same as believeing in something that does not exist. Try employing your imaginative faculties to bolster your belief. Is this a coherent article? I am a little on the sleep-deprived side, but in closing, here is hopefully an illuminating example of what I am going to imagine today:
There is a guy sitting across from me at a computer, thumbing through a book of some kind, looking glum and preoccupied. I happen to believe that he is an extraordinary, one-of-akind, irreplaceable individual with an eternal soul. I know. That's giving him a lot more credit than he appears to merit, bumming around over there. But this is what I believe about him. So now it's time to imagine. In my mind's eye right now I am seeing this guy as a tiny configuration of cells, invisible to mainstream humanity; a product of destiny, a masterpiece of providence, growing and changing and becoming an embryo, an infant, a child. I see his story unfold, a journey of ups and downs, light and darkness, joy and pain. I see him rising to manhood and coming into this room to sit across from me and squint at the computer screen and I hear his breathing and... something has happened to me.
If you had asked me a few minutes ago whether I believed this guy had a destiny, I would have said yes, because that's what I believe. But now... I know he does. I feel it. I believe it, in a tangible way. And I love the guy, even though he's a slob. It kind of just hurt me to call him a slob right there. Because he is an extraordinary, one-of-a-kind, irreplaceable individual with an eternal soul, and I notice. And I care.
If I repeat this exercise throughout the day, not only will I have a much more difficult time resenting other people's very existence ( which happens a lot if I don't self-monitor), but I will also have a harder time being bored and frustrated. After all, I will be surrounded by extraordinary individuals. Life will be epic. All because I used my imagination. It's up to you what you do with this exercise, but I feel I should warn you in advance that it will change things. For better or for worse.
