The power of imagination

Take a picture. A real one. One that de-picts something. Something recognisable. Something that does not require imagination. A house? A car? A soccer field? A beach? And then you conceal it. Hide it from the view. De-construct it. De-materialize it. Change its appearance. Until nobody will see or recognise it anymore. Unless: you imagine it. You think about it. Feel it. Let it reverberate. Follow it on your mind. Re-discover it. Re-create it.

And then you start telling the story. The story of what it was when you could see it and what it became on your mind. And of what happened in between. The story on your mind. Your unique story. What you perceive. What you feel. What you imagine. Yes. What you imagine.

This is the miracle in art. We don’t need to see or to hear. Or we only need to see or hear once. Have something that creates a starting point on our mind. And from there on our imagination begins to write a story. We create. We imagine. We start telling a story that is uniquely ours. The power of imagination allows us to enter a space full of pictures, sounds, feelings. All things that do not exist in what we call reality.

And of course phantasies can even happen without an external starting point. We have pictures, words, ideas on our minds that just spring up, that just evolve, that create a world of our own. And we can use them to surf the wave, to enter the flow, to be happy and to thrive.

I see a difference between creative imagination and the on-going revolving door of the mind that gets concerned with every little aspect of our lives. Petty thoughts and feelings that we cannot control, things that occur to us and evoke a response that is nearly out of the control of our consciousness. That is how aggression occurs. How thoughts perpetuate. How things get murky and muddy. And this is not what I would call creativity or imagination. It is more the restless monkey of our mind that sits in its self-afflicted cage with the helpless desire to escape.

Imagination however is radiant. Imagination associates and develops something into and onto a higher level. Imagination gives us an opportunity to grow. It gives us the opportunity to transcend. Imagination makes us happy and it makes us smile.

Have a nice day dear reader. Surf on the clouds of your mind….

The Narratives of our Lives

In the last three days I attended a psycho-oncological conference that happened in Invercargill right in front of my doorstep. The topic was the art of collaboration as health professionals.

The most important talks in this conference were about the stories of our lives. Our lives as human beings, as patients and as health professionals too. What constitutes a good and fulfilled life? What makes the life of a doctor, a psychologist, a palliative care nurse a successful professional life? It is connectedness. Being connected to people. To family, friends, colleagues. And to patients and their needs if you are a health professional. 

What makes a doctor in Palliative Care be a better doctor? What makes him a doctor that makes a difference for patients and families? Among a few other things it is probably him recognizing the need and reality of people to be connected.

In health we often assume that everything concerning a patient’s disease circles around how we, the professionals organize care. That we give the tact. That we make the decisions. But this is so far away from reality as it could ever be. Peoples’ lives circle around their social network, their Whanau (the Maori word for wider family), their lives in the context of being social beings.

And of course this is just a reflection of how everybody’s life works. We are all connected. In our private life, with our hobbies (for example the Flickr community for photographers), with our families. When you become a patient with a severe illness this is not changing. You remain connected. Your social life continues. It will be different. Something falls off and you need to grieve for it. Something is being added that might give you strength. But after all you remain a social being with social connections.

And in this social context the story of our lives unfolds. Our life is a narrative. A story that we can tell. That we live and tell at the same time. About past and presence and maybe future. A story that links us to our ancestors. To our grandparents and the people that lived before us long ago. And our children and their children will continue this story even long after we have died.

Maori, the indigenous people of New Zealand live this narrative very consciously, very intensely. They draw the essence of life from these life narratives. And they are attached to life through the narratives that link them with the past and future.

Life is a story. A story that we write. Each of us has his or her own, unique story. We are storytellers. We are story-livers. And we are embedded into the story of this life, this earth, this history. This is beautiful. And it gives consolation. We are not alone. Even if we feel so. We can relate to what was. And to what will be. However long or short that may be.