Notes on being a curious visionary and exercising the imagination.
Notes on being a curious visionary and exercising the imagination.
What do imagination and curiosity have to do with Democracy?
Hello friends, this week I’d like to dive into one of my favorite topics: Imagination. This is literally one of the most powerful and important abilities we have, individually and collectively.
Currently the collective imagination in the USA is charged up in a positive direction, and I for one couldn’t be more excited about the possibilities.
Read on for my latest article.
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Being a visionary is about exercising imagination.
Imagination requires space, playfulness, and permission to visualize something new or different.
We each have this ability - everyone can choose to imagine something different and new. ‘What if?’ is a powerful question. You might consider asking yourself this question daily - What if I had a job I loved?, What if I made more money doing work I enjoyed?, What if I had more time off to enjoy life?, What if I had better boundaries with toxic people?, What if we collectively decided to have universal healthcare in the USA?, What if real gun control existed in this country?
The key to this is being curious and asking the questions, not in having to figure out how those things will happen. Imagination isn’t asking for solutions, it’s simply asking us to exercise it, to use it. Merely asking a question often brings up images and ideas of how this would look or feel or play out. We can feel this in our bodies.
When we get stuck in analyzing, judging, or being negative, curiosity and imagination get shut down.
Imagination is the step that allows us to get to the rest. Okay, now that I can imagine having x, y, and z, what next? What steps can I take to get there, who can I ask to help, what do I need to let go of to have this, what must I learn?
Without imagination, nothing gets started, including art.
“I don't think art is propaganda; it should be something that liberates the soul, provokes the imagination and encourages people to go further. It celebrates humanity instead of manipulating it.”
— Keith Haring
When you decide to own your imagination, things change.
You won’t allow anyone else to dictate what is possible for you to even imagine to begin with. When you take charge of what gets imagined through you, you’re choosing what kinds of images, visions, and possible futures exist inside of you.
This is more powerful than you might have been allowed to, well, imagine. You’re literally changing the channel when you consciously choose your own imaginings.
Imagine what non-stop advertising and materialist messaging does to our curiosity and imaginations. We are constantly seeing the images given to us by the imaginations of others. When those others have an agenda they want us all to imagine, it would benefit us to look and see if we agree with this agenda.
The collective imagination in the USA is sparkling right now. You can feel it in your body. A new positive imagination is lighting up, and it’s become once more possible to really imagine making positive changes. This is the power of owning our imaginations, and speaking, creating, and working from this new energy.
It’s much easier to create something new from this electric positivity.
Imagination changes the world.
Every single invention, discovery, or new way of living was first imagined before it came into physical existence. Many positive evolutionary steps that humans have chosen to implement together came from the ability to imagine a new way of doing things here together. This is growth, evolution. This is the human spirit at work.
It almost always started with one person saying ‘what if?’. One brave visionary insisting on their own right to imagine something new and different, can change the whole world.
But so can the imagination of one hateful stuck negative small minded person. Imagination can be hijacked by fear, hate, small mindedness, the fear of anything changing, the need to control everything.
The difference is the energy of the vision imagined by the visionary: is it a vision of joy, peace, creativity, healing, new growth? Or is it divisive and hateful, intended to give the one who creates this vision power and dominion over others?
Curiosity is the key.
“Curiosity will conquer fear even more than bravery will.”
— James Stephens, Irish novelist and poet.
As you might imagine, curiosity is a driving force behind all of this. Remember being a curious child, wanting to know about things you saw or experienced in your daily life? What does this word mean, how do caterpillars become butterflies, what’s it like on Mars, what will I be when I grow up? Curiosity is the key to imagining something new.
Curiosity is what helps you grow, develop, and become. As an artist, when I become curious about something I’m working on, it’s the most fun ever. It’s an adventure I’m on, following where the painting wants to take me. If I’m trying to control it, or insist it should go one way when it’s obviously going another, I’ll get stuck and/or shut down my curiosity.
If you were constantly shut down as a child by uncurious adults, it might not feel safe to open up your ability to be wildly curious. This is the place in you that was wounded, and you can make this whole again.
When we have our imaginations shut down by others in some way, especially from well meaning folks who just want to ‘help’ by insisting that everything in their orbit has to completely make sense, including us, we ourselves must do the work of clearing off the energy that shut us down to begin with.
Why not choose to re-own and commit to the gift of curiosity, and the brilliant skill of being able to imagine? This looks to me like the perfect time on earth to do so.
Inspiration for bringing Art, Spirit, and Democracy together
This quote is from ‘Untamed’, written by Glennon Doyle (Highly recommended - do read this book!)
That’s when I realized that imagination is not just the catalyst of art, it’s also the catalyst of compassion. Imagination is the shortest distance between two people, two cultures, two ideologies, two experiences.
— Glennon Doyle, ‘Untamed' - p. 185
Thank you for being a subscriber, for reading, sharing, and commenting too. If you’d like to reach out, you can find me here (just leave a comment), or email me at art@kriscahill.com. Love, Kris