Imagination excites us. It gets us up off the couch; it leads us on adventures. It’s the seed of growth. It’s the key to manifesting everything we desire.
However, imagination may also lead to unhappiness.
I’m not speaking of imagining horrific things. We already know about the dangers of self-fulfilling prophecy – i.e., focussing on something so intensely that we end up producing the very thing we fear!
What we focus on, grows, right?
True as that may be, that’s not what I want to highlight in this post.
I want to speak about how even imagining wonderful things may lead to unhappiness – if we’re not careful.
There’s danger in the imagination that tells us all that we could be, and all that we should have.
- If we have a potted plant, we imagine that life would be perfect if we had a small porch or balcony.
- If we have a balcony, we long for a patch of earth, a little backyard.
- When we have a backyard, we wonder what it might be like to live with a lake view.
- And on and on…
We do this in every area of our lives. We dismiss our achievements, knowing that we are not yet where we wish to be. No matter our weight, we imagine being slimmer, rounder, or more toned. We long for a different, or upgraded version of home, family and friends.
The danger comes when we unwittingly use our visions of life-as-it-should-be against ourselves.
Before we know it, our visions morph from inspirational lodestars to laughing imps, taunting us with the ghost of accomplishments yet to come. They highlight our limitations and lack. We focus on what we want yet to accomplish, rather than all that we’ve achieved.
Our brilliant visions become weapons in the hands of our inner critic and inner mean girl, a yardstick against which we can never measure up.
As a young dance student, I was a slave to that yardstick for many years. Early on, my appreciation of beauty far outstripped my ability to achieve my vision. I wanted to look like the image I held in my mind. As a result, I was trying to dance from the outside, in.
I had to learn to dance from the inside, out. After all, that inner feeling is what made me fall in love with dance in the first place. Ironically, when I shifted my focus to the ‘inner dance,’ the outer picture started to shine!
Sometimes we have to just let the visions go.
It’s a delicate balance between the vision of what we desire – and gratitude for all that we already have.
Not that we shouldn’t have dreams. Not at all! We need our dreams, our visions.
It’s just that sometimes we need to check whether the balance has tipped from inspiration to castigation. If it has, we need to take a pause. Stop chasing the dream. Instead, be happy now.
Be happy now with this imperfect family.
Be happy now with this body just as it is.
Be happy now with these accomplishments to date. We have accomplished so much already!
Be happy now even with these challenges that are ours alone to navigate.
Our stories are uniquely wonderful, crazily colorful, all wrong and yet so perfectly right. Embrace the story of NOW and stop running after the impossible glossy magazine version of what our lives should look like.