Just imagine the stories we're making!

How Active is Your Imagination?

You Have an Active Imagination

Your mind is churning and producing new thoughts all the time. You are definitely good at imagining. You can visualize events pretty easily, and you're not bad at thinking up new ideas. Believe it or not, you could be a bit more imaginative. All you have to do is give yourself permission. Spend a few minutes each day daydreaming. It's good for you, and who knows what might come of it?

Blogthings: Cheaper Than a Therapist

There have been many times in my adult life when I've felt completely lacking in imagination. I was much more confident about my imaginative abilities when I was young. I think that I've always tended to consider "imagination" and "creativity" related terms, and "creativity" usually means something artistic to me. Therefore, since I've come to accept that artistic creativity isn't one of my strengths, it would make sense that I wouldn't have much of an imagination either.

Now I imagine I could be wrong about that, since this quiz result has nailed me and my imagination pretty well. I may need to re-imagine how I define "imagination," though.

There was a fascinating feature in NPR's series The Human Edge earlier this week about how humans have evolved as storytellers:

Humans have been telling stories ever since we began talking. These stories have become a kind of tool for us, as powerful as an ax or an arrow.

And although we may not be aware of it, each of us thinks of our life as if it were a story in the making.

"You're constantly rearranging the narrative of your life," says Antonio Damasio, a behavioral neurologist from the University of Southern California and author of the upcoming book Self Comes to Mind, which is about how our sense of story influences our lives. "And you're rearranging as a function of the experiences that you have had and as what you imagine your experiences in the future ought to be."

The quest for "something more" comes directly from our awareness of our own life story, Damasio says. Humans have a unique awareness that our lives are stories that begin when we're born and end when we die. And because we know we're going to die, Damasio says, we are not satisfied with merely surviving day to day. We want our personal story to mean something. We create stories about an afterlife or stories about things we do in this life that give it meaning: the businesses we build, the children we raise, the books we write, the good we do.

And it's that concern about creating a meaningful life story that has pushed humans to do new things, like exploring distant lands and building great civilizations, Damasio says. It's also one reason we're drawn to tales of remarkable people like Odysseus or Joan of Arc...

"All of these things are attempts by clever human beings to cope with fundamentally a rather bad deal, which is that you are alive, you enjoy your life and there are others that you love that can be lost," Damasio says.

But there is another way stories help us survive when we're experiencing pain, he says. Because we know our own life is a story, we are able to look ahead to the part we haven't lived yet and start writing those chapters.

As I've moved into my middle years, I've become increasingly aware of my own story, and of my role as its author. The story has had some unexpected plot twists and chapters I'd have preferred to skip, while there are others I'd happily read over and over again. I've gained more understanding of when and where I can direct and affect my story, and the times when I can't; sometimes it just happens to me, and I have to let it. I believe much of life is random, and that things do NOT necessarily happen "for a reason," but I do think there's a tendency to try to place events in a context that gives them a reason and a meaning. Other people's stories - those that intersect with our own, and those we witness from the outside - can help us create that context and meaning in our own stories. It seems that's one of the traits that makes us human - and it's one of the ways in which I most often use my imagination.

The connection between imagination and storytelling is pretty obvious sometimes, especially in genres like fantasy, science fiction, and fairy tales, but "imagining" doesn't have to mean "making something up." And even when the setting of a story is clearly invented or its characters are of other species, I find that what makes it resonate and have meaning are the elements that are recognizably human.

If creating story is one of the things that marks us as human, then so is imagination, since we couldn't create story without it. We all have stories. We're all writing - and editing - our stories as we go along. And some of us are using blogs to share portions of our stories, imagining we're telling them to - and building them with - our friends.

What story are you imagining today?