Imagination is the power that takes you beyond the known and the unknown to create your own unimaginable. The painter Paul Gauguin once said, “To observe I close my eyes.” It is unfortunate that we are often more concerned with what is than what could be.
So be an imaginative person! Pay attention to your imagination, your intuition, your insight, your inspiration, or any spark of the divine, for these are the things that make dreams. Be alert and watchful for the little notes, for they may strike a chord that will blow your mind. Listen, hold them tight, and see what falls out when you shake them.
Then, most importantly, write it down quickly before it moves, changes, and disappears forever. Francis Bacon said, “Every man should have a pencil in his pocket, so that he can record the fleeting ideas that come to him.” This is excellent advice because one idea can give rise to another, which in turn can support and enhance each other, and create the possibility for actions that can materialize the ideas into reality. That is the magic of perception.
Ideas have a wonderful symmetry. You grab an idea because you need it and it needs you. Remember this and always have a notebook, a pad of paper, a day planner… a mini cassette, a digital camera or a word processor.
Because ideas are very light things. They can disappear as easily as they appear and will never come back. What excites and excites you may appear only for a moment and disappear very quickly if you do not act on it immediately. Trust that when God in all his wisdom has given you a creative inspiration, do not let it disappear. Write it down before it leaves you.
Rolling Stone and rock god Keith Richards wrote the famous guitar riffs for “Sastisfaction” while waking up in the middle of the night in a hotel room. The rocker got out of bed the next afternoon and completely forgot he had written a song until he used a tape recorder later that day to hear himself humming along to the rock classic.
