About nobility I cannot be sure that the decline, not to say the disappearance of nobility is anything more a maladjustment between the imagination and reality. […] It is not only that the imagination adheres to reality, but also that reality adheres to the imagination and that interdependence is essential.*
(Wallace Stevens)

In his important book Homo Ludens Johan Huizinga argues that playfulness and seriousness should be held together, that is is only civilisations’ growing sophistications that have separated these.

Add to this Wallace Stevens’ assertion that reality and imagination ought to exist in an interdependent state, and you begin to wonder what we are missing out on when it comes to living with each other, our planet and ourselves.

I hope you get a chance to bring some playfulness and imagination into today – because it’s usually these, and not reality and seriousness, that are left out.

Stevens adds a further level of jeopardy when he claims human nobility is at risk. Nobility may seem a fancy concept but it’s a very functional state of being that is grateful for what we have and seeks to be generous. It is all about how we see and treat each other and our world.

(*From Wallace Stevens’ The Necessary Angel.)