Faith thrives with Imagination
Imagination is such a scary concept. Allowing myself to believe that I am capable of breathing life into my wildest dreams, and then sharing those dreams with those around me feels challenging.
From my professional experiences I’ve learned there is so much more to the world than what is easily imagined. Within my lifetime, I’ve had the opportunity to share the same rooms with women that move the world. Never do I imagine being one, mostly because I am scared to trust my capabilities.
A part of my upbringing as a bicultural Jamaican included lessons about humility. Recognizing my cosmic low self importance taught me kindness and damaged my self esteem. In the United States of America, successful women who have no or a low sense of self importance are groomed to be exploited.
Developing a sense of self-confidence and the strength to assert myself became two of my favorite business skills. Without imagination, at least one of the previously mentioned skills would become obsolete.
There is no need to purposely present an ego with no direction.
Sometimes I fear being alone, less so as I grow older. Being alone can sometimes feel like isolation, and as a result is mistaken for loneliness. Thankfully, the Universe has never left me lonely, not even once. Even when I felt lonely, there was always someone there — I am grateful to know trustworthy people.
Through learning how to be alone, and sharing time and space with my trusted friends I have learned that happiness is a safe emotion. That experiencing excitement over my dreams, even if they lead to disappointment, is worth the frustration.
Disappointment is not my favorite word. I am still learning to appreciate the beauty in the letdown. To be let down means that at one point we were uplifted. That we were capable of imagining a future, and even though the potential we hoped for fell short of our expectations, we still believed in ourselves (or each other) enough to try.
I think of myself as an optimistic realist. Fully aware that the world is a difficult, and occasionally heinous place. Sadly, heinous actions are an inevitable result of exploitation. Still, the world is not all rubble and thunderstorms. :)
When disappointment happens, I am thankful to have people who are willing to care for me. My friends are diverse. When I fall on my face some of them laugh with me, a treat that helps me release neuroses* from my initially tense body. When I flop on the internet, some of my friends logically remind me of the technical factors that my emotions make no sense of.
My logical friends are great, they’re the ones who will let me know when my imagination is flying too close to the Sun. Guidining me to balance staying within orbit, and maximizing my opportunities to be embraced by the Sun!
I also have friends who hold me, physically and spiritually. Who jokingly grab their baseball bats for me. Friends who sometimes don’t believe in me; even my skeptical friends are friends that I have grown to trust.
Without them, I wonder if I would have reasonable doubt regarding imagination. My friends keep me grounded. With each letdown, they remind me of the temporary nature of rejection.
Faith, however, is forever.
The * asterisk denotes use of hyperbolic language. The over exaggeration of terminology is intended to inspire thought and introspection.
