Many of us would finish the title with the word "imagination." After all, that's what we were encouraged to do, over and over, while we were young. Some of us even know people who encouraged us to do this while we were a bit older. Somewhere along the line, though, we stop saying this to people; instead, we encourage them to use their knowledge, to use what they've learned from other people. Sadly enough, this change even occurs in our supposedly "creative" fields such as movie-making and music--the movies that we see and the songs that we hear usually are simply copies of successful movies and songs made by other people, following strict formulas to "guarantee" success.
I don't want my imagination to die. I want to use it until the day I die. When I see something that looks marvelous, I want to be able to imagine marvelous things going on there. When I see a place that looks spooky, I want to think spooky thoughts. When I'm faced with a particular problem, I want to be able to come up with four or five possible solutions, and not just go with the very first thing that comes to mind. The very first thing may even solve the problem, but will it do so creatively? And is there more to solving the problem than just addressing the surface? I can give money to a charity to help hunger, but is that money just paying for today's dinner? What about tomorrow's dinner, and the next day's? Are we addressing the poverty, or just the lack of meals? The only way to address the deeper issues is to use the imagination that we've been given to see those issues and come up with unique solutions that haven't been tried yet--because what's been tried obviously hasn't worked well if the problem's still there.
I get criticized fairly often for using my imagination, for suggesting unique things to do. The criticism is usually pretty subtle, as in "Well, that's just not how it's done." And my response is usually, "Well, what's being done isn't working, so why not look at imaginative solutions?" People get trapped in their ways of thinking just as they get trapped in quicksand if they happen to step in it, and it's not pretty. Use your imagination today--try to think of three or four ways of doing something that you've always done the same way, and feel how nice it feels to use your brain in a unique and special way, rather than following the rules and paradigms that may have been around for years, but that aren't making things any better--they just provide the same old way of dealing with issues that come up. Our world needs new ways of doing things, and you have those, right inside your mind.
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