How To Dream Bigger
when you can’t even come close to imagining all the different scenarios
It all started with this quote:
“We cannot become what we want by remaining what we are” — Max De Pree
And it wasn’t until just now — typing it out — that I realized I’ve been misreading it this whole time.
I thought De Pree had said by reimagining what we are, not remaining.
Well, I guess this is just confirmation that we see what we want to see. Especially because on this last day…I found myself looking at my vision boards and wondering — how can I dream bigger?
How do you even begin to fantasize about something you don’t even know exists yet? Technically in “reimagining” what we are, we are not “remaining” the person we once were. But if you think about it, our imaginations can be limited by our current surroundings, the people we meet and speak with, the media we are exposed to — without us even realizing it.
There is so much in the world to see and learn, and in our lifetimes we will only scratch the surface. Motivating or anxiety-inducing? — up to you. However, it all leads to this question:
How do you break the barriers of what your brain knows to be possible, to start exploring the “impossible?”
Or in other words, the events beyond what your imagination can come up with…
The answer I believe could be given even by my 10-year-old self. That little girl who left the library every week with a new stack of books cradled in her elbows that reached up to her ears. The one who unapologetically and bravely explored extraordinary worlds, released from other writer’s imaginations trained to see what only their characters could.
I think these fantasy books I used to read, helped train my mind to believe and be open to seeing the world differently. And no, I don’t think the key to dreaming bigger is to just read a book about the supernatural.
I do think, however, that being open and exploring other people’s ideas, new worlds, and “foreign” experiences is how we can train our minds to look beyond what we can imagine. To temporarily break that fog, life can sometimes blanket us in — dimming our senses and imaginations with the routine of everyday life, the environment we find ourselves in day in and day out, and the social circles we inhabit.
Yes, we are used to our physical bodies being in one place at a time — bounded by transportation, personal commitments, etc. but our minds never really have to be that restricted. And so if we regularly seek out “unordinary” sources — > writers we are not familiar with, paintings of foreign countries or other worlds, designs of historical architects, biographies of interesting people maybe we too can be on a path that allows us to “dream bigger,” or outside of what we ever could “reimagine” our lives to be.