I pride myself on my imagination.
I’ve always been a daydreamer. I can get so immersed in my imagination that I’ve missed exits on the interstate more than a few times. (Just ask my wife.)
Plus, I’m an artist. My paintings feature macarons as spaceships, elk wearing bathrobes, and war planes dropping gummy bears from the sky.
My imagination is on point.
Or so I thought.
Consider how convicted I felt when I recently read something I wrote in an old Kim & Jason Annual:
I just want to see Kim & Jason touch the lives of millions of people, even if in some small way. I cannot imagine doing anything else with my life.
I cannot imagine doing anything else with my life.
If you’re new here, you might not know that I haven’t been doing Kim & Jason for a long time. I retired the comic strip in 2007. And in a plot twist that would have come as quite a shock to 2007 Jason, not only am I not doing Kim & Jason, but my career unfolded in a way I could have never imagined, and I am totally ok with it. It’s even better than what I was doing then.
When I wrote those words in 2001, I couldn’t foresee the speaking career that would take me to 48 of the 50 United States (I’m coming for you, Delaware and Mississippi!). I couldn’t envision how much I’d love making the art that I now make, let alone what it might look like.
And therein lies the problem.
There was something even better out there, and not only didn’t I see it, but I couldn’t even imagine it.
Frankly, I should have been well acquainted with this limit to my imagination. It wasn’t new. Less than a decade earlier, when I was a teenager, I was despondent over my struggle to win over a girl I was pursuing. I sat at the dining room table to confide in my father, laying out the case for us being a perfect match, as if logic alone would resolve the deteriorating situation. I was looking for some wisdom to unlock her heart and our happily ever after.
Instead, he said this: “Jason, have you ever considered there might be a girl X out there who’s even better for you?”
My heart sank. Either my plea wasn’t convincing enough, or my father wasn’t as perceptive as I’d given him credit for.
Girl X?!
It was the single stupidest thing I’d ever heard in my life.
Because my imagination was terrible.
And apparently very short-sighted. Literally just a few months later, I met so-called “Girl X,” whose real name is Kim, and now happens to be my wife.
Frankly, I’m not alone. It’s a problem for all of us, this pandemic of subpar imaginations.
Oh, they are professional grade when it comes to imagining worst-case scenarios, able to summon tragic plot twists too far-fetched even for Hollywood. We see them plain as day, a smorgasbord of unhappy endings in living technicolor. But when it comes to imagining something better than our present circumstances, our imagination stalls like a cart with no horse.
Life has always looked this way for me, and it always will.
No one could ever be as good a match for me as he was.
I should be content with where I am now; this is as good as I can expect.
It’s been so long; I can’t imagine how our situation could ever improve.
How can anything good possibly come from this disaster?
These are undeniably true statements…
If your imagination stinks.
Just because you don’t know how something is going to turn out doesn’t mean it has to be scary.
Fortunately, we don’t have to figure out how to level up our imaginations. We just have to trust in someone more creative than we’ll ever be.
I never could have imagined inventing snow.
I never could have imagined the smell after it rains.
I never could have imagined the taste of a strawberry plucked fresh from the garden.
I never could have imagined adding those adorable dimples on the knuckles of a baby’s hand.
If I could have imagined such a thing as a fish, I probably would have stopped with one. I never could have imagined the seemingly limitless variety of them that swim in the sea.
I never could have imagined a seahorse, a sea urchin, or the staggering variety of seashells that wash up on beaches.
Are you like me, too busy holding tightly to what I have, fearful of losing it, because I can’t imagine something better coming along? When life throws you a curveball you didn’t expect, is your imagination exposed as an imposter?
My imagination is pretty good. But it’s far from great, especially when life goes sideways. When it does, I take great solace in this reminder from St Paul:
“No eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no mind has imagined what God has prepared for those who love him.” (1 Corinthians 2:9)
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