Imagination

Dear friend, guard Clear Thinking and Common Sense with your life;
    don’t for a minute lose sight of them. They’ll keep your soul alive and well,
    they’ll keep you fit and attractive.

Proverbs 3:21-22

You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus                                                         Mark Twain

As I was taking a delightful walk this morning with my wife and daughter, we came across a large pond with ducks, turtles, geese, and various aquatic fauna. We saw some turtles crawling up a little ramp onto a little island in a nearby pond. The ramp had been placed for the turtles to get a better foothold to climb up to the island.

We noticed that two turtles were already at the head of the little ramp, but they blocked the way of a third turtle who was trying to get onto the island. Try as he might, the little turtle could not push one of the blockers out of his way. He repeatedly tried to push the offending turtle out of the way, but as we left the scene, he was not making a lot of progress.

The interesting part was, that as we walked and talked, we were making up fun stories about the turtles. We speculated that it was a sibling rivalry, and the younger turtle was blocking his annoying older brother who had always teased him as a kid. We developed other narratives that were fun as we spun some expandatory tales of the situation.  

It struck me that when we are confronted with a scenario that has no obvious explanation, we will invent one. We will “fill in the blank” with a narrative of our imagination that is fun or interesting. While this is an enjoyable and creative exercise, it can also lead to more dark narratives, such as conspiracy theories. Conspiracy theories again can be interesting, but the caution is that just because the theory can plug the information gap, that does not mean it is true.

Even more nefarious are those theories that are conjured up to make the case for our pet notions that have no evidentiary base. Sometimes, we may latch on to a theory simply because it seems to align with a needed belief system of ours. When we dismiss other more plausible explanations, then we are really in trouble.

So, using our imagination to come up with our own narratives to explain the world is natural, and can be fun and creative. We just need to have the self-awareness to discern if the narrative is simply to meet our own needs about how the world works.

Prayer: Lord, you have given us the wonderful gift of imagination, help us to use it wisely, Amen