Our Imaginations are Our Greatest Strength

I had a most wonderful dream the other night within which I was striding over a walkway, much like the kind you would find on an Imperial Star Destroyer with Darth Vader strolling back and forth. On either side of that walkway were large pictures in frames, and, like in Harry Potter, those pictures were moving. 

What I had created in my mind were gateways to memories. What you could do was choose a place in your history where you wanted to return to, to change things or correct decisions, and then leap in off the walkway and into that alternate universe through the portal. 

I suppose it is akin to looking down from heaven, as they do in films like It's A Wonderful Life or Carousel. 

It also highlights the power of our imaginations. I can't remember what I dreamt last night, but that one was a biggie, and has remained with me. It was brought to vivid life while I slept and seeped into my consciousness. It could be a message, or it could be that in the future I write a book about memory portals that you can dive into. Who knows.

Our imaginations are wonderful things. Dr Mark Vernon is on record stating that when countries, organisations and individuals fall into a crisis they lose the power to imagine. I can see that, and it is quite apparent in the current world politics where we have leaders who can't imagine giving solutions based on statistics and previous outcomes. That is not a way forward, and certainly not progressive. It seems that as we panic, so logic takes control and we move into protective mode, shoving aside the childish idea of dreaming and imagining. 

Yet our imaginations are our greatest strength.

Dr Vernon also tells us that when you're really in a crisis, you might also be surprisingly free; because it is in that moment, almost like the eye of the storm, that you can turn to the most radical of decisions. 

I truly believe that we should trust and nurture our imaginations. Those who do have given us so much in our lives; from current tech to day to day tools that we use; from art on the walls to music in our ears, everything that we have has, at one point in time, been dreamed up.

So while our leaders continue to make stupid decisions based on bad logic, we must stick together and slip into our imaginations. Perhaps that way we can create a better future. 

I have developed a talk based on this and I am attending schools across the South East of England; my aim is to give students a nudge and open their eyes to the power that lies within them. That power is the force of our imaginations.