As humans, it is normal for most of us sometimes to get stuck on certain thoughts, repeating over and over inside our heads. This is OK for as long as it is not in an obsessive and irrational manner, it’s normal and not a pathological pattern to worry about. This could be part of our inner desire and needs to be processed for our consciousness to be healthy and active. Even when we are not children anymore, of course, we still get carried away by our imaginations and unless we are not pre-occupied with other important things, such as our day job and other inescapable daily house chores, sometimes we spend big amounts of time on this without noticing it. It doesn’t mean it’s bad all the time or it is always a waste of time. It’s a matter of how you act on it or how you use your imagination for improving your life.
Homo sapiens really need to be imaginative so that our brain can access the realm that makes it more aware and more prepared in solving problems. It helps us develop self-confidence and improve our social interactions, therefore, make us more consciously engaged on realities that serve our interests. As what the famous Albert Einstein said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world”. What he means by this is that imagination will make your mind more creative and efficient in dealing with challenges and everyday experiences. Thus, Einstein emphasizes the importance of our imagination to our decisions and choices on our daily life.
According also to Tao de Haas, a psychotherapist and a social ecologist, “The ability to imagine things pervades our entire existence. It influences everything we do, think about and create. It leads to elaborate theories, dreams and inventions in any profession from the realms of academia to engineering and the arts. Ultimately, imagination influences everything we do regardless of our profession”. In addition, he also encourages us to enhance our imagination and access our creativity by improving our brain through daily exercises and practices. By doing this, we can face any obstacles in life and we can rise above our incompetency and self-doubt.
In addition, according to some study, being imaginative preserves our memory and will make us less likely to suffer things like dementia in old age. This is because using our brain through imagination will help develop new neurons, allowing the growth of new cells, therefore making it healthy and well-functioning. This makes sense as our brain is like a muscle that also needs exercise and constant stimulation for it to be healthy.
Given that in these times most of us have been tied to daily activities that don’t really involve real imagination and doesn’t find its value, it is up to us how to change the circumstances. It is up to us how to make others understand the importance of imagination and how it can help us to understand what is really going on in our society. It is also up to us how to show that using our imagination, we can help solve these problems and crises we are having, individually and socially. It will help us have a critical and innovative look at our future and our destiny as human beings. As what the famous scientist Carl Sagan has said, “Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were, but without it we go nowhere”.
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