The Future Is Powered By Our Imagination (Yes, Yours & Mine)

I love books. I like movies. I tend to read a lot more books than I see movies. Part of that is likely because I can read books at home in my underwear (they frown on that in the theater). That's more about convenience than skivvies. Another factor is that I get much more mileage for my ten bucks if I buy a book vs. spending it at the cinema. The book just lasts longer (unless the movie is Dances with Wolves). There's a bigger reason that books win in my world though.

The real cause (and I apologize to the big studio executives in advance) is that that Warner Brothers, MGM, Paramount, DreamWorks, and all the rest of the studios cannot compete with my imagination. It's not even a fair fight. They're on a budget, my imagination is not. They're bound by time limitations, my imagination is not. They're constrained by real world physical limits, my imagination is not. They're trying to please as many people as possible, and my imagination is not.

In fact, as I read a book, I am not even aware that my imagination is doing its thing. I'm just reading a book. You can read the same book and while the story might be the same, your imagination is filling in all the little blanks in it's own way, and much differently than mine did. You and I are different people, with different experiences, different perspectives, and thus, different imaginations.

How many times have you seen a movie after reading the book, only to be disappointed in the on-screen version of the story? For me, the answer is about 100% of the time. No fault of the studios, they just can't compete. They don't have access to your imagination.

But you do! Use it to dream, create, succeed, and grow. The world is depending on it. Its power knows no bounds. We've all read something to the effect that we are only limited by the scope of our imagination. That's exactly right.

"They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea." - Sir Francis Bacon