As cosmopolitans, as humans, when our other identities [as members of a state, nation, race, ethnic group, affinity group] come into conflict with our shared humanity, shared humanity wins.*
(Anne Lamott)

The true poem is not the work of the individual artist; it is the universe itself, the one work of art which is forever perfecting itself.**
(Ernst Cassirer)

Wallace Stevens speaks of imagination in a primal way for human existence:

‘To regard the imagination as metaphysics is to think of it as part of life, and to think of it as part of life is to realise the extent of artifice. We live in the mind. […] If we live in the mind, we live with imagination.’^

We note that imagination can be used by us in many ways, to tell many stories, to posit many possibilities. With our imaginations we make life smaller or bigger. Kosuke Koyama insists:

‘Struggle against our greediness is a frustrating, yet vitally important, undertaking.’^^

We can be greedy for the individual, the family, the team, the tribe, the nation, but everyone is waiting for what we have to bring, the contribution we imagined into being. Seth Godin wrote a wonderful book about the amazing things people want to be about together, but he warns:

‘the tribe is open to hearing from you – they’re not yours.’*^

Walt Whitman uses his imagination in a larger way when he looks upon the procession of everyone:

‘Each has his or her place in the procession.
All is a procession,
The universe is a procession with measured and beautiful motion.’^*

We judge others too quickly and such a procession requires the most open of imaginations, leaving our smaller scripts behind.

(*From Anne Lamott’s Hallelujah Anyway.)
(**Ernst Cassirer, quoted in Wallace Stevens’ The Necessary Angel.)
(^From Wallace Stevens’ The Necessary Angel.)
(^^From Kosake Koyama’s Three Mile an Hour God.)
(*^From Seth Godin’s blog: It’s not your tribe.)
^*From Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass.)