The gods must be crazy.
What a vivid imagination our Creator must have had to create such a complex, ever changing world with so many individual traits in both animals and humans. Idiosyncrasies make the world more interesting and it has only been the road to power and domination by certain individuals and governments that has led to the squashing of challenging individual thought, termed ‘crazy’, because it challenges the normal pattern of control. The vivid imaginations of many of our explorers and inventors has led to the opening up of new and interesting parts of the world, as well as innovative medical discoveries changing lives. Many of our art works are produced from vivid imaginations. One thing is for sure, if your keep your imagination vivid, all those little brain connectors will remain healthy and you have a good chance of avoiding Alzheimer’s disease when older, according to some latest research done by people with vivid imaginations.
To have a vivid imagination means you can think on quite a few levels and lateral thinking is probably one of your fortes. Our crazy Creator gave us a brain to use and would be well pleased if you have developed a vivid one. Why then you may have a good idea how we even got here in the first place. If your vivid imagination is always used in a positive way then you can actually influence others around you who may have let their imaginations slide into depression or gloom. Just showing them another way of looking at something in a humorous or positive way may change their lives totally. Why with so many people in the world looking for direction through meditation or a religious group for others guidance, the individual imagination can reduce this complexity to utter simplicity.
The works of Edward Lear in his book ‘Jabberwocky’, show an extremely vivid imagination, just as do Roald Dahl’s books including, ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’ a story that has been made into a children’s film many times. Some of the statements of Jesus Christ show the marks of a vivid, supernatural imagination, backed by the truth he knew. ‘In my Father’s house are may mansions, I go to prepare a place for you’ and his prophesy that he would rise from the dead on the third day would have seemed to the average person of his day crazy notions, yet he proved them to be true. Now as over half the world worships this man these days, I don’t think they would regard Him as crazy. His words and hope for the future in his mission on earth are regarded in great awe and give hope to the world.
The easiest way to label someone as crazy is if they don’t tow the line of normality set down by a society. In the west we are a conservative lot who would regard the ceremony of invoking the spirits in the Voodoo religion of Haiti as crazy. Why these people are jumping round with their eyeballs popping out. Yet if you can be bothered to listen to an explanation of the ceremony, it is just a vivid use of the imagination in a religious ceremony. Our church services in the west have only realized lately one can go a little crazy inside the church and maybe bring in a rock band or two without harming anyone.
I now write of a personal experience which had me, who has a vivid imagination, judged crazy with potentially serious consequences. I was admitted to a hospital through my family doctor to rest and see him in the morning before he could get to the hospital. An intern psychiatrist interviewed me and after suspecting I was crazy, through his text book judgment of me, set a trap question. I had been living opposite a river and had not been happy with my existence and circumstances at the time. He asked me if I had ever felt like committing suicide, to which I replied using some vivid imagination quickly, which I though the would understand, ‘No, but I sometimes felt like getting in that river and swimming away from all that surrounded me’. This stupid, unimaginative doctor committed me to a mental hospital for this imaginative answer. Such is life in the world of the unimaginative imagination. My own imagination materialized a job for me two days later after I got myself out of that place using my imagination. Let me conclude with a quote from Leonardo Da Vinci, perhaps the man with the most vivid imagination of all time.
‘Large houses inhibit the mind, small ones expand it .’
That doctor spoke to me in a large building and I had come from a very small one in the country!
