Can You Develop Your Imaginator?

Let me make an assertion: One can see only as far as one can imagine. 

Here’s a second assertion: The above statement applies to the sciences, to the arts, to politics, to one’s faith, to just about every endeavor in life.

Many years ago, I attended a leadership development group that met monthly for two years. I’m a pretty serious guy: I do the required reading; I do the homework and exercises between meetings; I prepare for class. Those qualities don’t always endear me to fellow students or co-workers or fellow attendees of whatever organization we belong to. It’s like I’m still getting the stink eye for “raising the curve.”

In preparation for the final class of our development group, we were asked to set forth some goals for our future. The last one I placed on my list was intended to be light-hearted, sort of as a self-effacing apology to my group-mates for being such a nerd. I said, “I want to practice being more spontaneous.”

No doubt you can hear the howls of laughter they heaped on me.

But, let me ask: Can one practice being spontaneous? Can one practice being imaginative? Creative?

Are these binary options, being spontaneous or not? Being imaginative or not?

I am a terrible artist as in painting and drawing. Let me rephrase that: I was told that I was a terrible artist. My only C in high school (See! I told you I was a nerd.) was in Art. I still remember the teacher’s comment she scrawled on the drawing I submitted of my beloved pet dog: CLUMSY followed by the grade of C. 

Once you get a label in your head, it’s hard to think otherwise. I was told I was a bad artist, therefore I am and will always be a bad artist. QED.

Then one day, after officiating a wedding, my wife and I attended the newlyweds’ reception at The Virginia Museum of Fine Art (VMFA) in Richmond. (I love looking at art even if I can’t do art.)  We were seated at a table with a beautiful floral arrangement in the center. At each setting, several pieces of paper and colored pencils were arranged and directions that while waiting for dinner to be served, everyone was to draw the flower arrangement, or the table, or the room, or a memory from the wedding. 

I froze. Maybe I could excuse myself for 30-minutes and disappear until dinner. Maybe I could “take a phone call.” Maybe I could do anything other than draw stick figures of the bride and groom or a rectangular vase filled with, to all appearances, dead and dying weeds. 

But you know what? There was a couple sitting next to us who worked at Pixar, the animation company. They were art grads, and it showed as numerous gorgeous drawings flowed effortlessly from their hands. Sensing my frustration and procrastination at participating, the wife said, “Try holding the pencil in your left hand and see what happens.”

You know what came into my head: if I’m clumsy at art with my dominant (right) hand, my left hand is going to produce dreadful.

Instead, out of my left hand came some fascinating shapes and shadows and colorings that I had never before created. Nothing ready for hanging at the VMFA or selling at a gallery, but interesting, original, something I wasn’t ashamed to share with a pair of Pixar animators as we passed our creations around the table. And all it took was to move the pencil from my right hand to my left, thereby releasing, freeing my hand from the domination of the logical side of my brain.

Are there other techniques to release one’s imagination? To get your “imaginator” into being more creative?

The topic of ALBAN’s (at Duke Divinity School)  weekly e-newsletter (August 5, 2024) was Creativity is for Everyone. The thrust of the articles was that creativity is an essential part of problem solving. One of the columns featured was about increasing creativity through Lego bricks by Shannon Hopkins of Rooted Good. Assemble bags of 50 or so random Lego bricks and see what people come up with. Another article focused on linking creativity to empathy. Articles on art and story telling were also featured.

Think of these techniques as stretching exercises. Do athletes go directly from the locker room to the stadium? No, they loosen up. They stretch. They rehearse movements. When I took calculus in college, our teacher devoted the first five minutes of class to “stretching” exercises: adding columns of numbers. Multiplying two- and three-digit numbers. Solving simple algebraic formulae. You know, fourth grade level stuff. Why? we asked. His answer: to loosen up and get ourselves ready for the more advanced work to follow.

For those of you who are writers, you’re going to have to find a creative way of resolving the conflict(s) that’s bedeviling your protagonist. You’re going to have to craft multi-dimensional, as in lifelike, characters. I have found a good prompt can loosen me up and jump start my creative juices into finding the solution I was needing. Sometimes the answer to firing up your “imaginator” may be as simple as moving to a different room or a different space to gain perspective. Maybe you ditch the laptop and write in a notebook or journal. Or, maybe try using your non-dominant hand. Other resources that have been crucial in my writing are a writing coach, an editor, a mentor, Beta readers, a critique group. 

Get yourself beyond the idea that writing is a lonely endeavor. Look for help. Raise your hand. . . No, not that one — the other one, and ask for, help. See where you’re led.