I listened to The Toynbee Convector by Ray Bradbury, read by LeVar Burton. It’s about a man who apparently invents a time machine, goes one hundred years into the future, finds a civilization that has solved many of our current problems, and returns and inspires people to create that future. His inspiring stories become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
It reminds me of a story I heard from an interview with Dom Di Tomasso. When he started with freerunning (or parkour), he was inspired by videos of people doing amazing things and learned to do the same. Later, after he was able to replicate what he had seen, he realized that the videos relied on special effects. They had erased crash mats. Nobody had done it as it appeared in the videos, but he thought they did so he learned to do it.
This is not a new realization, of course. We assume that something is possible which makes it more likely that we’ll find a way to actually do it.
It doesn’t mean that whatever we can imagine can be brought to life, but it does mean that our visions matter and that we can go further than most would expect. We can always go beyond our current horizon.
Similarly, if our imagination is more fanciful, we can find the essence and explore how we can bring it into our lives. What fascinates me about it? Can I find how it’s already in my life? Can I find it here and now? How can I bring it more into my life?