Imagination

Imagination is a wonderful and terrible thing. To succeed in life, you must have it. Too much of it, and you will scare yourself. Yet, where would we be without imagination? We must encourage a positive use of imagination, for without it, we are stuck where we are.

What have you ever done in life worth doing, that you did not first imagine? What have you ever given your effort to that was not first an idea?

Do you like art or architecture? Do you appreciate medicine? Do you find anything that Mankind has ever created, dared, or done – when you think about it – worthy of awe?

Do you marvel at how wooden ships crossed oceans on wind and prayer? Reflect on the symmetry and majesty of Egypt’s pyramids, on the integrity of buildings so tall they scrape the sky?

Do you not scratch your head, now and then, at planes defying gravity, dentists ending the pain of a cavity? Do you not lift the hood and ponder the complexity of a combustion engine?

Do you never look back in time, recall that steam trains and their marvelous hiss once did not exist, or think about what followed our industrial boon, how we imagined, planned, and landed on the moon?

Do you never pause to see yourself in a puddle, consider who invented the mirror, imagine what it would be like to live by fire and candle, and ponder how we got from Franklin’s kite to light at night?

Have you ever read a book of fiction – anything at all – and wondered how such clever, intertwined, organized but original ideas got into the mind of the writer, what caused her to sing in that key, what put her on that wild horse, dashing toward a horizon only she could see?

Did you ever stop to inquire how shaving cream fills your hand when you push the can, how a mile of suspension could possibly carry thousands of cars each day over huge rivers, with no apprehension?

Or how words you speak into an electronic matchbox travel thousands of miles without distortion? How the human mind, eye, and hand can magically reproduce something in perfect proportion?

Without imagination, where would we be? What did Michaelangelo say? “I saw an angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.”

Of course, imagination can have a dark side, all the “what ifs,” night frights, replayed images of worries and wounds, things that will not happen yet lurk in the corners causing lost time and peace. Sometimes a mind will spin and spin, refusing to cease.

And there are people – always have been – who imagine things not good, who dabble in evil, are misfocused, adrift, who dishonor the gift. It goes to their head. Or as Napolean said: “Imagination rules the world.”

Like everything else, every tool in our garage or woodshed, you can use it for ill or to get ahead. Imagination is like that, a tool of sorts, one to keep sharp and use well. Thomas Edison, father of that lightbulb said, “To invent, you need a good imagination …and a pile of junk.”

That is how we used to think, how we got encouraged to imagine the future, a wonderful place where we would test, invent, go places, take constructive risks, and stretch the limits of our thinking. We need to do that again.

We need to reawaken the power of constructive imagination, give kids a push, and some inspiration, let them try things, fail, try again until they succeed, and build confidence. We need to give them running room – enough to get airborne and allow their imagination to carry them somewhere good.

G.K Chesterton, the fiction writer who – like C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien – defended Christianity through stories, once wrote: “There are no rules of architecture for a castle in the clouds.” A wry wit, he is the one who also noted, “There are no statutes to committees.”

We seem to be selling individual imagination short these days, not having kids read fiction, not challenging them to think bigger, and not setting the expectation that they should exceed expectations.

Where you could go with imagination is endless, but two last thoughts. Einstein said: “Imagination is more important than knowledge, for knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world … all there ever will be to know and understand.”

More poetically, William Blake encouraged us “to see a world in a grain of sand, and Heaven in a wildflower, Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, and Eternity in an hour.” Imagination is more wonderful. We must encourage it. To succeed in life you must dare, and that requires imagination.

Robert Charles is a former Assistant Secretary of State under Colin Powell, former Reagan and Bush 41 White House staffer, attorney, and naval intelligence officer (USNR). He wrote “Narcotics and Terrorism” (2003), “Eagles and Evergreens” (2018), and is National Spokesman for AMAC. Robert Charles has also just released an uplifting new book, “Cherish America: Stories of Courage, Character, and Kindness” (Tower Publishing, 2024).