Imagination

This post is rough, but an achivement none the less because thoughts were so difficult for me to form in my head and transfer to papper.
“I’ll be right back.” I quickly told my husband. I started off through Sears, past big plasma screen TV’s on my right, took a left at the children’s clothes, and weaved through three shelves of shoes, into a bare hallway straight ahead. I paused briefly to look at photos of friendly Sears’s staff and then opened the door to the Woman’s Restroom. A picture on my left in front of the first stall caught my attention. It was of a waterfall, flowing down a man made stone wall into an illusive abyss. Beneath was the caption:
“Imagination has no boundaries”.
“That’s not true.” I thought, out of acknowledged impulse and a bit of frustration. I briefly pondered my hasty reaction, but the image had no lasting significance to me and rapidly drifted to the back of my mind. A few days later, however, I discovered via internet that Branches was focusing their September/October issue on various aspects of “Imagination”. Intrigued by the coincidence, I felt challenged to assemble my vague impressions on “Imagination” and “boundaries” and their importance to me and record the conclusions.
Here is a scenario my husband produced. Imagine an alien…an alien bearing no resemblance to any creature, mineral, or vegetable. It cannot be created with lines, it cannot incorporate material of any sort, it cannot be purely formless, it cannot be a bleak vacuum, and it cannot be a simple blob. It must be formed of something, entirely, completely, from top to bottom, original, holding no resemblance to anything in existence. We cannot produce such an illustration. Imaginary imagery is knitted from collected bits of the surroundings we have encountered. Imagination does not work independently in our minds. It does not have the power to entirely originate, merely the influence to recover, combine and reproduce memories in a unique order.

While the act of imagination is indeed vast, to deem it immeasurable, unlimited, without boundary is naive. Imagination is only as powerful as the mind in which it resides. And despite our smug outlook, even the cleverest of human beings is restricted to the finite. Life however, in and of itself is finite, restricted to what we can see, smell, feel, and touch, and life is all we can be sure of because it exists, and existence is all our finite selves can rationally prove. Of what consequence is this? Maybe I am taking the matter a little too serious...after all, more or less, wasn’t this merely an inspirational saying; intended to stimulate us to remember our own worth and potential? Perhaps. And while I am always one to encourage others to expand their minds, to think positively and independently ( even if their conclusions deviate from my own understandings) I also believe it is good, humiliating and right for us to recognize our limitations and not be swayed to think of human potential as omnipotent.

Reality is the most sensible, logical state in which to inhabit. We should confront it, both the stirring and dispiriting facets, because then, we can modestly grow to understand more about ourselves and of life itself. But, what exactly is reality? In essence do we each make our own? Well, we all begin as infants, and use our senses to explore our surroundings and later mature to a more established awareness of reality, not full comprehension , but, a rather foggy impression of the universe, based on the environment in which we were raised and our own physical and mental capacities. And everyone is restricted to physical confines. If any human had an unconstrained capability to imagine, he would subsequently have the potential to limitless knowledge and understanding, which no man has. Being aware of our inability to obtain full knowledge, we will respond accordingly. For instance, we will know that our own conclusions are easily erroneous and we will then be more forgiving of others in their irrational or flawed beliefs. This is a form of humility, and meek individuals, being childlike, are eager to acquire more diverse varieties of information and consequently rise to superior understanding.
A friend of mine, who nonchalantly believes the closest explanation of humanity lies in the movie The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, gave me a comparison of us humans to ants. He said, “Imagine an ant colony. They are puny and cannot comprehend us greater animals. They do not even have the ability to imagine us. Yet, simply because they cannot detect us, does not invalidate the legitimacy of our existence.” First off, I will reiterate my proposal that we are limited as humans and can only speculate within the boundaries of our nature. Further, although an ant can never entirely comprehend us, our existence can and sometimes does, affect an unsuspecting ant, so could the existence of a higher power or intellect bear any weight on our existence whether or not we can comprehend it (if it indeed exists)? This struck me. Maybe we are like those ants, in a universe with superior intelligence, but we do not have the capability of grasping their existence.
So then, acknowledging our limits in imagination allows us to seek out one of the most important questions of humanity. Is there a God? The confines of our imagination allow only for speculation of higher existence because physically, it cannot be detected. If reality, and what we can touch, see, and smell are all that exist, then limitations in imagination are merely an extension of reality itself and eternity, and all-knowing, has no true bearing. But then, there is that wonder if existence as we know it, has a manufacturer, beyond our imaginations, too vast for our intellectual capacity and this supposition could never be disproved by the restricted, physical realm in which we live and have our being.