If you were worried, I found it, and have since been drawing and writing the afternoon away to my little heart's content. Oddly enough, in my search that included boxes that have gone unopened for ages, purses buried beneath my bed, drawers, shelves, and everywhere else (the sketchbook was conveniently in my desk drawer, where it ought to have been) I came across a speech I wrote my senior year of high school for Academic Decathlon (Yes, Academic Decathlon.).
I read over it, and thought why not type it out and share with the world my thoughts three years gone? It ends abruptly (for my taste, though I do tend to write on and on at length) I think due to the time limit for the competition, and you may come away thinking it was lucky I didn't graduate high enough to make a speech at the ceremony, but I found it funny to come across after a week of renewing my love for books. Enjoy!
Imagination is more important than knowledge.
- Albert Einstein
If somebody asked you what a three-year-old's imaginary friend has to do with finding a cure for AIDS, what would you say? How about Curious George and the discovery of a new energy source? And what about building a fort out of blankets in your living room and successfully trading on the stock market? Seemingly unrelated activities like these serve to show how the imagination is necessary to propel society [forward].
There are many misconceptions concerning what the imagination is, and what it can do. Many people believe imagination is something that only children should have and that with age, people should forego dreams and imagination and simply live by the rules. However, imagination encompasses a lot more than being silly, or simply being creative. Using your imagination after you hit age thirteen should not condemn you to being percieved as a 'dreamer' without a sense of reality. As a matter of fact, in many ways we can see how 'dreamers' who used their imagination have changed the world.
When civil rights activists, participating in one of their largest events, heard Martin Luther King, Jr.'s 'I Have a Dream' speech, the ideas and the types of equality he mentioned probably seemed like an almost naïve ideal, but Martin Luther King Jr. had to have the open-mindedness, the ability to imagine something that big, [in order] to give them the notion that true equality was possible. In another sense, Pablo Picasso put his imagination to work in creating his massive 'Guernica', a painting that debuted and changed all of Spain's view on war and even today is a universal anti-war icon. Furthermore, many people argue that while the imagination is a lovely thing to have for the arts, it does not play a key role in more structured things like math and science. How could that possibly be true when a hypothesis in itself has merely been imagined? The Space Race that occurred between the United States and the Soviet Union was full of potential for science, but it would never have come about it somebody hadn't imagined that rocketing to the moon was possible. Without the imagination, there would be no new thoughts and no progress.
There are many ways to harness the imagination in order to use it towards accomplishing something, and one of the most fundamental things a person can do for that is simply to read. However old-fashioned or out-dated reading a book may seem these days, reading is an important tool for putting the imagination to work. When you read a book, you're given details and vivid imagery, but ultimately it is your imagination that allows you to build up the story in your head. It's your imagination that allows a book to carry you off to somewhere distant and exotic. This kind of reading goes beyond entertainment, though. It can help to develop critical thinking skills, and the ability to problem solve. Reading even develops writing skills, because the more a person reads of an author, the more they will write like that author. Furthermore, reading encourages people to think outside the box, and to really go after dreams like rocketing up to the moon.
So what exactly does Curious George have to do with finding a new energy source? By reading Curious George books, a person develops the ability to foresee the outcomes of George's mischief, and develops their imagination by doing so. The skills involved in foresight and imagining possible outcomes to a book like Curious George can be applied when a person looks at our current energy source. They can identify flaws, foresee outcomes if we continue use of this source, and can use their developed imagination to think of new possible energy sources.
Hasta luego!
Alex
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