The Internet and all our other amazing information technology makes it extremely easy for you to find any piece of information you seek. Perhaps it’s too easy. There was a time, not so long ago, when you would have to fill in the gaps in your knowledge with imagination. Now, many of those gaps have disappeared. With Facebook, for example, you don’t have to imagine where your friends and family members might be and what they might be doing. You can know all the details instantly, with pictures and video and precise GPS coordinates.
That’s all well and good, but what is it doing to your imagination? If you ever stop exercising your physical body, it becomes flabby and out of shape. In order to live your daily life, you don’t have to walk great distances of chop wood or carry heavy objects. There are machines that do all that work for you. Unless you intentionally make the effort to exercise your body, it’s probably not going to happen very much.
In the same way, there are now machines and systems to fill in all the information details you need to know. And if you don’t intentionally make the effort to regularly exercise your imagination, what happens to it? Does it atrophy in the same way as a muscle that’s never used?
Actually, information technology gives you the opportunity to be even more imaginative if you choose to do so. The possibilities for exercising the imagination are greater than ever before. But the thing is, you have to choose it. Imagination is no longer necessary to get by in life, but then of course merely getting by is not what life is about.
Make the most of the opportunities you have to make rich, positive and creative use of your imagination. Don’t just sit there and passively absorb all the information that’s being fed to you. Disconnect from what’s mostly predictable anyway, and dive into your creative, imaginative essence. Take one little possibility and build on it, entirely in your imagination, until it covers a significant part of your world. You may be a little rusty at first, but you were born to imagine and soon you’ll feel perfectly comfortable and natural exercising your imagination. Get your imagination in shape, and discover all the new and wonderful things it can bring into your life.