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| Bettejo Dux has lived on the cosmic Garden Island of Kaua'i for over 40 years. Bettejo is a regular columnist in the Garden Island news and is the author of the famed novella, "The Scam." www.bettejodux.com |
IMAGINATION
Isn’t that a beautiful word? It rolls tartishly off the tongue. Yes it does, yes it does. Think about it.
It has a sly, sassy happy hooker glance- come on, baby, dance with me- feel about it.
Albert Einstein said, “Imagination…is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.”
Ain’t dat’da’trut? You betcha.
It is an absolutely delightful human quality. A grand dimension. It created Alice in Wonderland, the Hobbit, the black stallion and Ricky Ticky Tavi.
It is a fiction writer’s right arm, right brain, right thinking gift. It is a very healthy human quality. If other animals have the ability to imagine we would have to imagine it. I can imagine a horse imagining an endless rolling tasty luscious green pasture. American Indians imagined a happy hunting ground. A place where all the kill came back to life to do it all over again. Maybe this time getting away. Maybe next time sending the hunter off to die and return.
Do you know who are the three best liars in the world? Thespians. What could be a bigger lie than being another person for three whole acts on a
stage? Novelists. Everything in a novel is a lie. It’s made up vividly in the mind. Projected in black and white print on paper or screen. And, last but
not least, politicians. They, poor things, cannot tell the truth. Isn’t that odd?
Creative imagination and artistic expression go hand-in-hand.
Sculptures say they imagine the horse they see in the marble and just chip everything away ’til it’s revealed. Painters see a starry starry night and
then fill a canvas with the color and shape it needs to bring it out for other eyes to see. Composers, like Mozart and Beethoven, hear notes in their
heads they jot down and send to musicians to fill the world with glorious music.
Kids imagine all kinds of things. Scary things under the bed. Santa Claus and reindeer. Easter bunnies who lay eggs and angry dragons with
whippity tails and long snappy teeth and flaming fire breath.
While it’s true there are good imaginations and bad imaginations, I think good imaginations prevail. Otherwise we’d all end walking around in
cloud cuckoo land.
A vivid imagination is very different from a cast in concrete belief. Imagination is often playful. A belief is almost always a snarly rigid structure it’s best not to fool around with.Belief is a strait- jacket, imagination is free. Distinction between imagination and belief depends on religion, tradition and culture.
Whatever it is, never step on a kid’s wings, on a child’s imagination. Let them fly. Teach kids it is not true, but teach them to use it creatively. It’s a positive, great human quality. Nothing in life can be created if it is first not imagined in the mind. This is where creation comes from. It involves many different brain functions, emotion, memory, thought. Portions of the brain where multiple functions occur.
Lively diversity always trumps rigor.
