How’s your imagination doing? Now this goes back a very long time, but I remember when I was a very young boy, maybe two years old, and my father and mother bought me this pedal car. And I was able to run up and down the street just pumping the pedals, and then it rained. And where I grew up, when it rained, it really rained, tremendous rain. And after the rain abated, there was a puddle in our front driveway.
And somehow, I steered the pedal car into the puddle and I got stuck. And then suddenly, I was in the middle of the ocean, and I was surrounded by sharks. And I didn’t know what to do because if I got out of that car, I was going to be devoured by sharks. And it just went on and on and on. And then my mother said, dinner time.
And dinner time was dinner time in our home. 06:00. You couldn’t be late. If you were, there were consequences. My mother believed in a sense of order as a lot of people look for a generation did.
Religion, cleanliness, and order in the home. So that particular day, I had to park my imagination and get out of my little pedal car. And, of course, there obviously were no sharks because the water was not even two centimeters deep, and away it went. So I’d like you to try an experiment in the next week or so. I would like you to embark on an imagination adventure.
Now what do I mean? Another example. The other day, I was in a major shopping center, food center, buying food, and I had a shopping cart. And suddenly, I decided I wasn’t in the food store. I was in a sports arena, and I was racing my car.
And I took my shopping cart and I you know, rather leisurely, but in my mind, of course, racing racing through the aisles, racing up the stairs. And you know what? I won. I was in first place. Wow.
What a race. And the audience clapped and clapped. It’s an amazing phenomenon how he won this race. So what you’re going to do is you’re going to embark on your own imagination adventure. Whatever it is, you could be a pirate sailing over the open sea, or perhaps you wanna be a spy that you’re trying to discover some secrets that no one knows.
Or perhaps you’re, an alien who has just arrived from Mars, and no one knows who you are. Or perhaps you’re actually a dog, and you’re now in human form, or you’re a human and you’re in dog form. And, I mean, it’s just endless what the mind can run with. Right? The point here is that you step out of your comfort zone and you act a little bit funny.
And, of course, you don’t share this with anyone because they would think you’re rather strange. It even sounds strange to relate it, to be honest, but it stimulates your imagination because they say going to school when we’re young and we go to school, this is our most imaginative time. We have reports to do. We have new friendships to make. Maybe we have a love affair that will start, etcetera, etcetera.
Right? But once we leave that environment, we get, of course, a job, usually, even though unemployment rates are very high amongst young people under the age of 25. Still, most of us eventually will get a job. And once we get a job, we’ll realize, oh my god. This is the worst thing I have ever done in my life.
If someone told me this when I was 16 years old and I was just coming close to finishing high school, I would never have proceeded in this way. I hate what I do. And studies have shown that this is the truth now. Many people extremely disappointed, extremely sad. Everyone asking what is possibly going on.
So what am I to do? What can I possibly do? Well, the answer is I don’t allow myself to get caught up in the nonsense, right, at all. I keep my imagination alive as much as I possibly can, And I do things like these imagination experiments on an ongoing basis, on a daily basis. Change your life story if you’re feeling distressed.
Be someone else for a day or so. See if you like that personality because after all, it is your story. It is your life. It’s not your parents’ life. It’s not your siblings’ life.
It’s not your children’s life, eventually. It’s your life, and you have to find a way. Now, I often ask myself, what would really have happened if individuals, you know, ultimately gave up being imaginative? They were no longer imaginative at all. We would get really bland, wouldn’t we?
And if you look at some of the bureaucratic functions that actually occur, if you go into a bank, for instance, or perhaps you go into a government office, or any type of large corporation, people are not inventive. They are tired, and they actually say the BBC did a study that after twenty years of somewhat repetitive action, the mind actually has lost or loses its imaginative qualities. Period. They’re gone. And perhaps they’re gone forever.
That’s a startling thing. It’s like a horrible addiction to something that’s slowly poisoning you. And in this case, it’s called work. And work why work? Work leads to money and, of course, freedom, but it doesn’t, of course.
That’s another lie that circulates. A job will never make you free. Perhaps being a painter in Paris will make you free, and you won’t have any money, but you will probably be freer than if you’re in a job working in some bank in New York City. You know? So you think this to yourself, deathly serious our imagination.
Because imagination creates stimulation, and stimulation gives us ultimately hope. And you know what they say. You know what they say. If you want to be imaginative in your life, you’re going to need critical thinking. And, of course, critical thinking is great, truly great. You take care. God bless. Bye bye.