The path of least resistance is a poor teacher.*
(Ryan Holliday)
It is important to believe that the visible is the equivalent of the invisible; and once we believe it, we have destroyed the imagination; that is to say, the false imagination, the false conception of the imagination as some incalculableĀ vates within us, unhappy Rodomontade.**
(Wallace Stevens)
It’s not only our thinking that needs to be trained.
At some point we have to move our imagining into making something happen.
Our bodies have to be trained to get in the game, to make them move from here to there, to do this or that.
To take the notebook and open it up to begin writing and drawing out what is in the mind, to write the proposal, to pick up the phone, to schedule some time with the colleague to forward what we have in mind.
Every time we do this we learn something about who we are and what we want to do.
Johan Huizinga would probably tell us that our goals and the necessary moves are all part of a game.
Any imagination that doesn’t move us into the game is false imagination.
(*From Ryan Holliday’s The Obstacle is the Way.)
(**From Wallace Stevens’ The Necessary Angel.)