Everyday Canvas

Reality and Imagination

Prompt: "Imagination is the only weapon we have against reality." Alice In Wonderland "Bewitched is distorted from reality and nothing is as dull as constant reality." Agnes Moorehead. What is your take on this?

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I don’t think reality is dull, neither is imagination, especially when they accompany each other in acceptable doses. Lean heavily on either one and you’ve got troubles.

If I were to be made to choose between reality and imagination, however, I would definitely go with reality. Reality or, in other words, truth forms the basis of everything. If you ignore the facts and turn your head away from reality, you would be a good candidate for an inmate in a mental asylum.

All art--together with the writing arts--gain inspiration from their artist’s reality. Take a writer, any writer. For the sake of analogy, let’s go with Fyodor Dostoevsky. If he weren’t sentenced to exile in a Siberian labor camp for four years instead of being executed for his crime of reading banned books, he would probably not be able to depict the feelings of the exiled in most of his books, specifically in Crime and Punishment. Or take Picasso. If his eyes didn’t see the world in its reality first, would he be able to imagine his art as the distortion of reality?

On the other hand, many an imagination has helped the reality and life on earth through new tools and vehicles. This means imagination can become reality when expressed in a certain, special way because, according to scientists’ findings from the EEG recordings of seeing and imagining, the neural patterns of imagination and reality flow in opposite directions in the brain. I find it curious for these two things that flow opposite each other to work together well if handled with delicacy.

My conclusion, therefore, is both imagination and reality enrich our lives. Without imagination, our lives would be gloomy, and without reality, we would all turn into wild raving maniacs.