Human beings are one of the most curious creatures on the planet. This sense of inquisitiveness roots from the fact that we have an active imagination. A lot of what we have achieved over the course of human existence has its foundation on imagination.
We maybe one of the only creatures on earth who can imagine things. You must have spent hours imagining various things and scenarios in your head. You also must’ve noticed that most of our ideas have stemmed from the idle imagination that happens when we think. But what exactly do we know about imagination?
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A brief premise
Simply, Imagination is the ability of an individual to think of what could be, could’ve been and what could never be. It is the ability of our brain to present scenarios based on our train of thought. Technically speaking, Creativity stems from our accessing the prefrontal cortex.
Any idea we have, any thought that constructs a scenario, utilizes imagination. As a kid, you must have thought of yourself as a superhero, wearing a cape and jumping up and down the sofa. In this case, you are imagining that you are a superhero, using a prop to help you get more into character. Activities like this fuel our imaginative powers.
Creativity is more defined when we dream. Since we are no longer in control of the peripheral cortex, it’s the brain that drives the imagination.
You can say that your thoughts are in autopilot. In our dreams, we often experience things we haven’t done in real life, but may have thought of doing or wondered how it feels like. Dreams are when you live your imagination this is exactly why when you wake up from a good dream, you have a fleeting feeling to go back to sleep and continue it.
Applications in real life
Everything you see around you, the chair, the blackboard, your clothes, the room you are sitting in and the building where the room is, were all part of someone’s imagination, which they then brought to life.
One of the biggest industries in today’s date, the entertainment industry, runs entirely on the power of imagination. The movies you watch, the ads you see, the cartoons you watch have all culminated from someone’s imagination. Making a movie is an extremely imaginative and creative process.
It all starts from an idea that the director imagines, which he then works on. He either writes the entire story by himself or hires a story writer who he then conveys the idea to. Thus, the story and script of the film gets completed, all out of imagination.
Various steps that follow also require imagination, like set design, costume design, direction, camera angles and movements etc. All these activities are supervised by the director who supervises and makes sure that they stick to his idea.
Another example of us using imagination in daily life is reading books. When we read, we visualize everything. Since there are no pictures, everything depends on our mind, deciding how the characters look, how the surroundings seem, how the air smells etc. The writer or author of the book also leaves various clues and hints to guide our mind into knowing what he or she is thinking.
Our Creativity is exponentially powered and worked when we read a fantasy or science fiction novel. This is because unlike nonfiction or biographies and documentary, which also make us imagine, fantasy books create whole new worlds for us, straining our imagination, compelling us to recreate the world in our own style. Therefore, we are often prompted to read regularly. Books are a great source of information and an excellent exercise for our creative minds.
Without our power of imagination, human beings wouldn’t be where we are today. If Leonardo da Vinci hadn’t imagined a flying vehicle, then the Wright brothers would never have experimented on their plane, if Nikola Tesla hadn’t imagined that we could use electricity to light our homes, we all would still be sitting in darkness.
The world runs on imagination, it fuels our growth. So, it is very important to think about our ideas and most important, visualize them and try to shape them as we see it.
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