HERE’S A SHOUT OUT FOR IMAGINATION

At this month’s Storytelling meeting, I am leading a short little workshop called ‘Awakening Our Imagination’. After almost two years of listening and telling stories at our local chapter I realized just how powerful the gift of imagination is for each of us. We have some very skilled tellers in our local group and they always tell and perform stories that they have borrowed from somewhere or made up themselves. Every tale invites the listeners’ imagination to create a visual, emotional and psychological experience that is often compelling, always engaging and frequently intensely personal. That’s one of the things that I truly enjoy about the act of storytelling and the art of listening.

Take a moment and think about how your imagination affects your daily life. You have had some diagnostic tests and your doctor’s nurse calls to tell you that the doctor would like to see you tomorrow. No, not next week but tomorrow. ‘What time works for you’, she says? You set a time, hang up and then your imagination totally kicks in. Why the urgency? It must be something really serious otherwise there would be no rush to share the results with you. You go on-line and check out your symptoms for the twelfth time on one of those sites totally devoted to such things. You are now frightened almost to death. By the time you get to the appointment, you have already anticipated the diagnosis and it isn’t good. You make the decision to tell the doctor to forget the diagnosis and just tell you how much time you have left.

Or perhaps you are watching a favourite tv show and there is a tender scene that triggers memories that leaves the show to the PVR and you mentally enter that earlier real world experience and imagine how things could have worked out differently for you. Your family wonders what that odd smile is on your face.

Personally, there is a perfume that years later when I pick up its scent in a drug store, a donut shop or in a business meeting, I am immediately transported back to a special personal relationship. For that moment I am back there but I know that the video playing in my head has been nicely and thankfully re-arranged by my imagination.

Imagination is part of the software that is always running in the back of our daily lives. Without it, our lives would be mostly black and white images. Our dreams are playgrounds for our imagination. In my Storytellers workshop I offer this definition: Imagination is our ability to create images and sensations when they are not perceived through our sight, hearing or other senses.

When was the last time you had an up close and personal conversation with your Imagination?

So, dear readers, here’s a long overdue shout out to our IMAGINATION!

Author: Don Herald (Member, Peterborough Storytellers) August, 2012