Lecture 12
The Power of Imagination
How can our own imagination change our life? This is one of the vital questions I have asked myself many times and my answers have always surprised me.
Our own imagination is a precious gift for us because we can use it wisely to achieve excellent results for our development. I have found out that imagination is a curious mixture of complexities and contradictions and it overflows with possibilities.
I was trained as a teacher at Nasinu Teachers’ College in Fiji and after a lapse of thirty years I met a few of my colleagues from my college days at a reunion dinner. Most of them looked gray and old and had silvery hair. They had wrinkled forehead and their physical youth had escaped a little.
We greeted each other and had a lot of useful conversation. One of them who was a good friend of mine could not resist the change in me and showed some surprise with a comment that made me think deeply. He said, “Ram, you have aged.”
Naturally his comments would have hurt somebody who was still in his fifties and was being told that so and so was looking old. However, he did not hurt my feelings because he stated the truth. I was definitely over fifty and was beginning to look older.
What intrigued me though was his imagination. In his own imagination he was still young at his age of fifty whereas I had aged at the same age. That is what counted a lot for him and I was pleased with his feeling about himself.
Then I met another of my mates from the same gathering who after some discussion said that he too would have succeeded like me but it was unfortunate that he did not get a chance.
I did not want to offend him for his ignorance and lack of motivation but I told him that I succeeded in my life because I created my own chances and opportunities myself and went ahead and took full advantage of those at all times. I advised him to create his own chances as well and make use of all his opportunities by fully utilizing and exploiting his imagination.
The point I am making is that we cannot crawl around on our knees to reach the year 2020 and go beyond into the 22nd century. We should feel gratified that God has granted us the ability to be able to go wild with our imagination and dreams and do things positively.
Therefore we must get rid of all our negative feelings and accept ourselves as a person who came into this world to succee