Can You Imagine?

by Segun Akinyode

Imagination is reflective of the past in the present; an evaluation of the present towards shaping the future. It is a sensibility that wills the being to engage in an intellectual duel with the whole of human faculty which may result in a purgation of certain emotions.

A welter of individual happenings or an intimate event prompts an entity to embark on a journey in which the senses, the mind, and the physical body react according to the quality of their involvement in the interaction.

It may be the whole gamut of intuition capable of energizing the creative impulse towards bringing forth bodies of knowledge that have potentials among which are entertainment, amusement, education and other various therapeutical orientations; the ultimate results of these potentials is a psychological or physical reaction from the recipients of the bodies of knowledge.

The nature of rapport among the componential features of imagination in the quest to actualizing the concept is confoundedly exciting. The being or physical body is the contraption that houses all the components of imagination.

So, all the coordinating, planning and controlling necessary for an effective realization of imagination are incumbent on the being. However, he may execute these responsibilities haphazardly, if he is not conscious of the enormity of his position.

Thus, the dimwit, the mentally deranged or retarded, the idiot or stupid ones may not be in position to appreciate this divine endowment of Man, even though they possess one of the basic components of imagination, the heart, and it performs the same functions in them, as it does in the system of the roundly sound beings.

The peculiarity of the brain as a feature of imagination is established when the organ is evaluated on the bases of its being the essence of being, the power house of the Homo Sapiens and the coordinator of Man’s complexity and intricacies. The brain’s ability discharge its functions, may be the only parameter that distinguishes the animate from the inanimate; the lower animal from the higher animal.

The senses, another component of imagination, are a group of abstractions whose influences on the process of actualizing imagination is determined by the relevance of a sense to the particularity of the incident, event, phenomenon or idea being imagined.

As a result of the multidimensional nature of the senses, each member of the order, magnetises relevant sense organs in the course of its contributions to actualizing imagination.

Thus, the olfactory sense may function well but definitely not in the absence of the nostrils. The teeth and the tongue are allied to taste while the sense of touch must have the pores in tow, if it is to function wholly as a human sense. Similar dimensional considerations go for the other senses.

The mind is the last of the components. Its peculiarity lies in that, its abstraction, unlike that of the senses, is total and unadulterated. This implies that, the categorization of the senses as abstract is for theoretical conveniences alone, the same cannot be said of the mind because it has no definite position in the human anatomy, like the sense organs.

The strength of the mind lies in what constitute it: nothingness, yet it is made up of the totality of the man; this, in essence, is what is meant by the sixth sense.

It is the potpourri of these features especially how fine-tuned one’s sixth sense is that determines the quality of one’s imagination.

In the areas of creativity, numeration, and the likes, areas greatly influenced by imagination, one may need to conceptualize in the abstract. The richness of one’s experience, which may include familiarity with the issues being discussed, will go a long way in determining the quality of one’s imaginative output.

This is why it is not impossible for people who have honed their imaginatory prowess to certain sharpness to repeatedly produce creative works of various dimensions using various media.

When certain occurrences are evaluated against the current dispensation, it is not out of tune to hear such interrogation as “can you imagine?” If the incident to which the interrogative statement is anchored actually happened, the probability is very high that the ‘can you imagine?’ is a mere psychological reaction to a demeaning or a condescending demand or request.

If, however, the occurrence has a color of exaultation about it, the complainant is wont to smile and bask in euphoric distinction.

So, is this behavioral tendency called imagination acquirable in “can you imagine?” alone? Where is my muse?

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