By Isaac Audu Ogoja Jnr aka Joe-Agbor
Daily, you are expected to have deep thoughts about life, existence, communication, relationships, happenings, behaviours, drives, ambitions, aspirations; name them: from the good, pleasurable, and palatable to the bad, ugly, and unimaginable.
You are made or crafted by what you hold inside of you: what you imagine, who you become, and how you behave are gotten right from within the thoughts you have inside of you before acting them out on the outside.
From the very day that you leave the line of infancy and cross over to the stages of childhood and adulthood, you begin to have different images building up in your head.
Your ability to aspire for the highest possibilities, to become great, or disabilities to remain idle and become poor are being nourished by what evolves from your head and mind. You cannot wake up overnight and act in success or failure, in favor or against your will, without first imagining it in your head and mind.
Imagination is the deep, serious, protracted thoughts you take before deciding to do, act, or say something.
You can create the mental image(s) or picture(s) of what to do or say before acting to realize it.
You can act or speak in such a way that another can capture what is being imagined inside of you.
What, how, and when to do a person good or bad starts first from the images you hold inside your head and mind. Your creative idea first starts from your imaginary ideas.
Many great men and women we hear and read about today had to first carve themselves from within their inner thoughts, and work hard to translate what they imagined into reality. Great architectural designs of buildings and cities were all carved from great minds with great imaginations. And beautiful stories and dramas evolved from the deep imaginations of authors and actors.
No second, minute, or hour passes that a person should not have the time to take to hold imaginary images inside of them. If you live and fail to think deeply in imagination, you are just an existing shadow seen but lacking in knowledge.
You are expected to create time for yourself to think deeply, evolve knowledge, push on to realize that dream or ambition lurking beneath your mind and thoughts.
You are supposed to carry on with that imagination bag all the time. It means you must set aside the time to have quiet times to imagine who you wish to become, what you wish to have, and how you wish to act in realizing your thoughts. Living and moving about in the emptiness of thoughts cannot help you realize your potential.
We have those who imagine having the good things of life, a conducive and just society, and work towards having it, and we have those who prefer to imagine violence and bloodshed and act violently to see blood being shed.
While some others imagined hate and acted hatefully, others imagined love and acted lovingly. It all depends on which side you choose to stand on.
A person without a bag of imagination is more or less living in the darkness, and acting or saying without imagination is like observing a car that has no engine to propel it.
This is to say that imagination is the motor that drives our mental engine. What you imagine most of the time is what you turn out to be. What many people have become today is a result of what they had once imagined in their hearts to become. It means that what you say every time is also a result of what is gotten out of your imaginary bag.
No wonder they say, as you think of yourself, so also is who you turn out to be in life.
Our country and society today are a result of the imaginations of those who have been in authority and power. If before now, our leaders had had imaginations of having a great and just country, there wouldn’t have been any doubt that what we are seeing today would have been a figment of their imaginations.
But the realities are here because they are those who, in their imaginary minds, desire riches but deceived the citizens to elect them into power; pretending to govern but siphoning the people’s common wealth for themselves and their families.
Many founding leaders of some countries that are great today had great times to imagine greatness for their countries and worked hard to realize their dreams of putting in place solid foundations for their countries’ greatness, which is seen today.
God did not just wake up one night and decide to create the world, HE, I believe, had a clear imagination of the type of world HE was to create. Like God, you should by your great imagination to contribute your knowledge to have a just society and community
Don’t allow your imagination to grow cobwebs. Rather than have evil imaginations to overshadow your minds and heads, why not allow the imaginations of peace, love, joy, understanding, and respect for one another’s existence to becloud your thoughts?
It is in my imagination that we will very soon overcome the hardships and difficulties confronting us all today. I am very sure that we will surely have every reason to thank God that He gave us the grace to have these imaginations which I am sure will be manifested in the ways we behave and act towards one another. To God be the glory.