Your
thoughts reflect you and your actions influence everything in your life. The
human brain is faster and can perform more tasks than any supercomputer ever
created. To understand what the universe offers, you have to be able understand
your own thought process first. What a bunch of clichés! What obvious
statements! Judge as we may, these are true. Simple, obvious truths which help
us realize and accept wholly what we can be.
Imagination
leads to creation. Without visualizing anything, you cannot create it. If an
architect cannot form a mental picture of what his next design should resemble,
he will not be able to create a draft of it. If a writer cannot imagine what
his characters are, his story will never take life. If a movie maker cannot
imagine a storyline, his movie will never be born. Likewise, no action is taken
without thought.
Everything
in this world, is born of imagination. Imagination is not something one can, or
rather should, tame. Imagination shows its true potential the more you let it
run free. One of the finest examples of unadulterated imaginative creations is
the Lord of The Rings universe. Middle Earth. J. R. R. Tolkein did not write a
story about a kid who’s thrown into a grandiose scheme of things. He created an
entire universe, all by himself. He did not stop by just creating different
kingdoms and races. He gave each race a language. And the language a script.
And the usage, grammar.
The
characters Tolkein introduces us to are’nt just some run of the
mill characters. They have a family. Their ancestors’ names, their roots, what
their forefathers were known for. How they first came to be, how they came to
live in their current predicament, everything. Even the villain gets a totally
complete back story. Everything about Tolkein’s world is complete and undeniably
original. He now, was a man who let his imagination lead the way, instead of
trying to control it. The story of the Lord of The Rings is not about kings or
wars or about some grandiose scheme to purge the world off of evil. It is about
the little things that make up life. It is about the little things that make
life worth fighting for and breathtakingly beautiful.
Man has always been wary of the powerful and the untamed.
Imagination too is such a thing. Nothing compares to the power of imagining
something. Within a blink, one can traverse the whole world, explore the great
seas and conquer the entire universe. What imagination offers us isn’t power it
isn’t stature it isn’t wisdom. It is something far more fundamental and noble.
Freedom. Freedom to dream, freedom from everything else, freedom to think what
we want. Freedom to be what we want. Such a thing truly is the most beautiful.
Today’s world, I believe, is moving further and further
away from dreaming. Imagination is the stuff of dreams! Today, kids in schools
aren’t taught to learn the subject, they’re taught to score marks in an exam.
Today’s teenagers aren’t told to pursue their dreams, they’re demanded to
decide among a set of options. Today’s professionals aren’t let
follow their interests, they’re given a job and badgered into doing it. Today’s
youngsters aren’t allowed to believe in their convictions, they’re cornered
into accepting their position in the rat race. Today’s kids are tomorrow’s
elders, realize it!
Imagine
a balloon. Or rather a balloon yet to be inflated. Someone gives you a small box and
says, this is the space allowed for your balloon, blow it as huge as you can!
The irony of this situation is that it is happening all over again and again.
Everywhere and to everyone. It is not that it is an unavoidable situation. It
is because people are starting to think ‘this is my limit’. We are our biggest
obstacle. The only person we have to outshine is the ‘us’ of a year ago, a
month ago, a day ago, a second ago. As long as we keep moving forward with an
open mind and a raging ambition, what the world will offer us is limitless. And
to accept what all the world has in store for our awesome selves, all we need
is to let our imagination run free like a wild stallion on the evergreen meadow
that is our mind.
A
friend of mine once said that as long as you’re positive towards what you’ve
received, you will be complimentary to success in more than one way. All I say
is this. Let yourself dream. Dream big. Dream huge. Dream ginormous! And work
towards it continuously, unrelentingly and unforgivingly. And when you’re given
your reward, reap it whole heartedly with your imagination!
