A Reminder Regarding Imagination


It started with a sketch on a napkin in a coffee shop.  And a flight of imagination brought about the first non-stop, non-refueling,  around-the world flight  of the Voyager.

 https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1986-12-24-mn-204-story.html

We forget that a napkin and a good imagination - at times provide for the greatest good for humanity. Burt Rutan tapped into his intellectual lodestone and his imagination was strongly attracted to the idea; a legend was given birth.

And in a digital age where I take note of toddlers in strollers tapping through screens of a cell phone while "Mommy" ignores them speaking on her own cell phone, I worry.  We have fixated on a very small portion of a very large and unexplored frontier when we allow our children to consistently avert their gaze to the digital world.  They understand a world of zeros and ones.  They have missed out on an entire universe which involves imagination; and for the ones who are gifted - the ability to climb the difficult summit of paranormal experience which taps into parallel universes which we scarcely grasp exists.  

Empiricism and analytical thought are the stuff of science and technology.  Imagination which is allowed to give birth to her own child, Intuition, is the greatest gift from the gods which is offered to mankind.  I believe our children need to grasp a crayon, a pencil and paper, prior to having access to the digital world. Because when spontaneity is cannibalized by expediency we raise the robotic child incapable of climbing the summit.

Some of my own best "flights" have been scribbled on napkins seated across from journalism contacts.  More important "flights" jotted in small moleskin journals - one gifted to an analyst - and others destroyed because of the sensitive nature of what they contained.  All flights - began with three or four words.  And then - the flight of imagination took the reins. Journalism standards of,  "Who, what, when, where, why and why now, were always applied.  I added one more category years ago.  "Why not?"  And it is the "Why not?" which has provided the most interesting flights of all.  smile

Tammy


swoffordwrites@gmail.com



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