“Imagination never pretends to know it all. It never demands or claims an absolute standpoint, but it always relishes and celebrates the fact that it is on the threshold where it cannot see everything. The kind of knowing that is in imagination is knowing through exploration.”
—John O’Donohue, Walking in Wonder
As we grow older, it seems like it becomes harder to maintain the state of “knowing through exploration” that O’Donohue describes as imagination.
Yet, there may also be new ways we’ve never realized we were using our imagination. Does your work allow you to explore in an intuitive way? What about gardening? Repairing something around the house?
Even walking the forest on a late winter day can awaken the imagination. Not only observing what is, but wondering, “what if…” can help awaken our inner imagination.
While imagination might look different than it did when we were children and the world was new, we can always choose to look at the world with new eyes.
—Jessica Lien, Prairiewoods development coordinator
photo by Angie Pierce Jennings