imagination

I don’t even remember why I went on to YouTube this morning, but I ended up cycling through clips from Seinfeld, which arguably for me, is the greatest sitcom ever. I’ve watched every episode at least a dozen times, easily more, and I never get tired of them, and I never fail to laugh out loud at the most iconic bits like ‘Yada, yada, yada.

Yada, yada, yada…

Later during the day, I played Russian Roulette with my Kindle. I wasn’t quite sure what I was in the mood to read so I thought I’d let fate decide. She chose a book of essays by Ursula Le Guin called Words Are My Matter. I read the first few essays. The Operating Instructions was my favorite. I should say, it’s less of an essay and more of a polished version of a talk she gave to the Oregon Literary Arts about the importance of the imagination.

I think the imagination is the single most useful tool mankind possesses. It beats the opposable thumb. I can imagine living without my thumbs, but not without my imagination

Ursula Le Guin

Such is the primacy of imagination.

Al of us have to learn how to invent our lives, make them up, imagine them. We need to be taught these skills; we need guides to show us how. Without them, our lives get made up for us by other people.

Lots of gems in this essay like:

Listening is an act of community; reading is a means of listening.

The imagination is a big deal. It’s super powerful and something that needs plenty of exercise whether that’s active imagination as Jung suggests we use it or mythic imagination as Stephen Larsen suggests.

Time to shift gears and start thinking about the upcoming week.

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