Just what you thought you could't do.

             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!