June 2, 2010. I graduated.
I’m at a point in my life where the decisions that I make are of my own and not predetermined by the educational path that society has laid out for me. It’s almost alarming to think about the fact that for the bulk of my life, my education has been shaped by forces that has approved this path as a “natural” (and necessary!) progression in life.
What I have come to realize over the years though, through a series of unexpected events, is the beauty of imagination. I was asked the question recently of why/what I was passionate about international development/life… and the words tumbled out of my mouth explaining social change and the nature of aid before I even realized, wait… it was a textbook answer and wasn’t the entire truth of why I love this space — the international development, empowerment, social finance and innovation.
So, to share a part of my journey, this is why I love this space and what I got out of education. One word.
This singular concept has been the catalyst in my life to meeting amazing concepts, people, books and initiatives. It is the fact that imagination is the ability to free oneself from the constraints of the human condition. The fact that when you allow yourself to explore spaces that leaves you completely out of your comfort zone, it serves the purpose of satisfying your mind’s hunger for knowledge. The human thirst for knowledge and innovation is the result of imagination. Humans create and invent as a result of imagination. But most of all, what I am really excited about, is that with imagination, its the way that we view the world, and how all of that can change, the minute you open your mind to the possibilities. i.e. Sharing a social finance model to the investment world, empowering women that there are better ways to feed your child or something as simple as remaking used plastic bags into makeshift footballs.
Most people get through life thinking “if I can make it through this, things will be better later,”. But they forget that the experiences they have, shape who they are and they eventually forget what “better” and “later” means. And we see this phenomenon everywhere, from the politically suppressed society to the 40 year old who’s working a 9–5 job and hating every minute. They forget how to imagine. To create. They forget that the predetermined paths that society has somehow conjured along the way may not necessarily be the best path, and who is to say it is the right path to begin with? The world/people are quite eager to give you a set of criterias for your life, if you let it. They forget that we have the power to change educational systems, to change the way we interact with our environment, to bring on the culture we wish to see at work, or to even bring on that New Economic World Order!
Is imagination merely a talent, such as a good singing voice, the ability to “make things up: or “think things up” or “get ideas”? Or is it, like science, a way of knowing things that can be known in no other way? We have much reason to think that it is a way of knowing things not otherwise knowable. As the word itself suggests, it is the power to make us see, and to see, moreover, things that without it would be unseeable. In one of its aspects it is the power by which we sympathize. By its means we may see what it was to be Odysseus or Penelope, or David or Ruth, or what it is to be one’s neighbor or one’s enemy. By it, we may “see ourselves as others see us.”
It is also the power by which we see the place, the predicament, or the story we are in.”
– From Wendell Berry, “God Science, and Imagination” in Imagination in Place
