7/23/13

Imagination's Intoxication

I find it fascinating the images and movies I play out in my head. Imagination is a most useful tool in prison. I cannot tell honestly all the thoughts or images that can conjure in my mind. Then again, how appalled will people be if they knew our thoughts? How much will it change the way people, friends, family, and associates view us?

Day-dreaming is a most marvelous thing. To think that we humans can detach ourselves from reality should show the mental capabilities that we have at our disposal. Confined in a cell all day does damage to the mind that scars deeper into our psyche. I can personally attest to this. Mentally, it starts breaking you down. Those with fortitude will get chipped away, little by little, and those that are not "strong-minded" will get torn up block-by-block.

How amazing that I can put myself in any situation I want. And if I know history, any era or time. I could play king or God in my mind, and, at times, I do. Others I play Don Juán. How easily these "fantasies" bring warmth, happiness, and a smile on my face. Its not even material. I can't portray to others what I'm imagining. With that a question arises in my mind: what was the point(s) of having our thoughts to ourselves? And only if we convey them to other people will they know. I'm held in a cell all day but although my physical self is here, I'm long gone in other worlds and parts of this one. It's like I'm not even in prison at times. And that right there, that sense that I don't have to comply with the "punishment" of "incarceration" is very intoxicating.

My lively, vivid imagination is a work of beauty. I wonder how evolutionists, creationists, and neuroscientists give meaning or explain this ability we have? Maybe we picked it up in order to block out nature's violent ways in past times? To the first humans how scary must have natured seemed? Perhaps a very eccentric found it lurking deep in their brain? Or it could've been an evolutionary trait to propel humans to what they've become. Whatever the cause that caused that effect, I'm grateful.