IMAGINATION IS EVERYTHING

• By: Louis Ochiel
• Date: June 05, 2025

"Imagination is everything!" I can't remember who wrote those three words in that order, but it seems he's summed up it all. Imagination is everything. As we reach successive plateaus in life, we begin to imagine ourselves reaching the next one. And that’s how our imaginations lead us on—from one idea to another, through every day and every year of our lives. But if we’re not careful, our imaginations can lead us into mazes of confused complications from which we may find it difficult to extricate ourselves. So it’s a good idea, as we use our imagination, to always strive for simplicity—to avoid the complicated. Are we living the lives we want to live, or are we living stereotype lives based on phony values? Usually, they’re a combination of both—a kind of compromise which says, “Surely other people must have some idea of what constitutes the good life. After all, there are so many of them.” But when we look closer, we see that they’re living shadow lives, as Mumford calls them.

In competition, ice skating, you’ve seen a couple match each other’s movements almost perfectly. It’s called shadow skating, I believe. They try to match each other’s movements so perfectly that each might be the other’s shadow. In any sort of neighborhood, you will tend to find people living much the same way. Their homes, landscaping, furnishings, and lives are typified, if by anything at all, by an almost total lack of imagination. Imagination, like anything else, needs fuel for production. You can’t have something from nothing. Thomas Edison said, “I’m a sponge. I want to know the answer to everything.” With his great lifetime inventory of information, he could assemble an incredible array of new combinations and permutations. Electric light is a combination of elements—and so is any good idea, or any bad idea for that matter.

Most of us make the mistake of not asking, “Why?” Why do I live here in this house rather than in some other house? Why this life instead of another life? Why this work instead of other work? Why these rewards instead of others? Now, this doesn’t mean we’ll change anything necessarily—but at least we’ll be living lives that have been examined and found to be to our personal liking. We’ll know that we’re not living the lives we’re living simply because they reflect and are pretty much composite copies of the lives we see about us.

There should be, to my way of thinking, deep main currents in our lives—our family lives, our work and our leisure, and our rewards in the form of income. Our family lives should be good and richly satisfying. What is our input here? How are we using our imaginations to bring meaning, charm, and love to our family relationships? It’s an ongoing process that should become richer and more meaningful with the passing of time. How about your home? Is it what you want? H.L. Mencken once commented that the average home is a house of horrors and doesn’t reflect poor taste so much as it reflects no taste at all. People tend to order their steaks medium—and their homes and lives the same way. Medium rhymes with tedium. The family is the most important part of the life of most of us.

What good is accomplishment if there’s no one with whom to share it? What good is anything if there’s no one with whom to share it? And since the family is first in importance, it represents a fertile field for the imagination—not just for the woman in the family, but for the man and hopefully the kids as well. Family creative thinking sessions are a lot of fun and a never-ending source of good ideas. Check every idea for basic simplicity. Avoid complication whenever possible. No matter what it is we want, if it’s within the realm of reality, we can get it through imagination applied to our work.

Nothing now being done by man is being done the way it can and will be.

Everything will be done much better—not can be, will be!—whether it’s the result of our applied imagination or not. People who resist change in their work are impediments to progress. Yet the first words the new person on the job usually hears are, “Now this is the way it’s done around here.” A business leader made the comment that if we’re doing anything this year the way it was done last year, we’re obsolete. That’s an extreme generalization, but deserves careful attention. In most things, it’s true.