“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.” Albert Einstein
A couple of afternoons ago, I was fishing at Ahukini Landing, a popular spot for fishermen, people in trouble and a very attentive cat population. I have recently written about getting into fishing. No, this is not going to be a fishing story, about the big one that got away or losing my weight, while reeling in a ghost fish.
However, it’s kind of the idea of the ghost fish, almost undetectably playing with the bait, or is it just the weight bumping along the bottom? What is going to happen next? I maintain the faux pose that’s so easy when you’re just standing there, with a ready grip for the inevitable life or death confrontation with Moby Dick.
I was standing toward the end of the pier. This would be my fourth expedition in nearly as many weeks and I still suck, but it’s been very entertaining for me. I feel a bit like an undercover circus clown. The writer is the person fishing, not me. He knew that endless stories would be the catch giving him the greatest joy. As for me, I’m just watching and having a ball. I can talk like this, because I am a tried and true Gemini.
I stood there, like a shabbily dressed, runway model at the end of the walk, frozen in my fisherman pose. Keep in mind, this whole experience is still so new to me. When I thought about this fishing thing the very first time, I instinctively knew it would be a great platform to take my excuse for a mind anywhere at all.
I started looking around, with nothing much on my mind and it felt like I was seeing it all for the very first time, totally immersed in Eden.
So this is really not a fishing story, it was my mind that took the hook at that moment.
Suddenly, I became part of a three-dimensional landscape painting, maybe Matisse, framed by my imagination. That is the bait i swallowed whole, right there on the pier. It felt electrifying. It took me into the story I wanted to talk about with you. It has to do with imagination, a word and concept we ought to feel empowered to use way more often. Don’t get nervous, I do not intend to get lost in the vagueness of esoterica. We can’t take too big a bite of anything without getting lost. We’re gonna stay close to the ground.
As a kid, I know I had a full blown planetarium experience, the night my father died. I was alone in my bedroom, which was always shared with my brother, who was gone that night. The phone call came from the hospital, my mother shrieked and I could feel it. I didn’t dare get out of bed. In the darkness and emptiness of my bedroom, I was consumed by the feeling I was floating in a pitch black sky, punctuated by stars, near and far and everywhere.
Everything travels through our imagination before it lands. It is where the mind and the heart meet and take flight. Thinking about it, it sounds much cooler to say, “I imagine” versus “I think”. It feels much more spacious and filled with possibility than the mundanity of a thought.
Trust me, I don’t for a minute imagine there is anything remotely revelatory in any of this. Whenever we are so inclined, our imagination is patiently waiting to bring us along for the ride. There is only one seat reserved for each of us.
Honestly, I was so happy I started thinking about all this. Standing out there on the pier, with The Rod of Ages in my Herculean grasp, there was nowhere else to go, but into the world of the make believe and its love affair with the truth.
My God, I have imagined so many things during my life, it is totally unquantifiable. Obviously, I can only speak for myself, so I am loathe to even think about the use of the dreaded “We” word, because of its presumption. I am only going to get to do so many things in life, visit so many places, meet so many people and on and on. Absolutely everything else, which is truly endless, is the providence of my/our imagination.
The palette of my imagination has grown richer and deeper as it has aged. I think that is what stunned me out there, engulfed by endless beauty. My mind wandered beyond words a long time ago. I have loved trying to retrieve it, initially for my grandson and now for you.
I think imagination is about tomorrow. It is about what we don’t know and that is pretty much everything. Frankly, I am not even sure what comes first. Is it the emptiness of the next moment, or are we already there, waiting.
Well, there are two things I want to share right now. I hope this didn’t sound like another fishing centric tale, that’s one. I also hope it doesn’t sound like some drug induced state of euphoric, word wanking. I had to put that in, because Jimi is singing, Hey Joe, at this very moment. Music and imagination are the marriage of sound and the space in between, a potent partnership.
I could go on and on, because imagination is the spice in the recipe of life. It is where our uniqueness takes flight. I just wanted to take this opportunity to celebrate the gift of imagination in all of us.