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it might sound strange to locate the
problem here
but in some of our most despairing moods
what really goes wrong
is our power of imagination we're not
merely
sad it's that we can't imagine any
better life
than the agonized one we currently have
and what we really mean by imagination
is the power
to summon up alternatives when we're
down
we can't imagine finding another job or
not minding what the gossip says about
us
we can't imagine finding another partner
or imagine letting ourselves
trust someone again but on the other
hand
with sufficient imagination almost any
problem can be worked around
if one door has closed the imagination
should in time be able to find another
there are other cities we can go to
there are completely new sorts of work
we could try
there are places we can travel where no
one knows who we are
there are lovers who will have a very
different approach to intimacy
than those we've known to date the
oceans are large
and beautifully unconcerned with us
we are grown-ups that is people with
choices
we are not the small children we once
were who had to depend on their parents
for everything
and were imprisoned by narrow
circumstances
we would be able to build ourselves a
small hut on the edge of the desert
we could change our names if we're
feeling shy and defeated
we don't ever have to go out and see
anyone again we can live by ourselves
and mind our own business
we can even go mad for a while and then
recover a lot of people do we could
throw ourselves into learning a new
language
or take a university degree in sanskrit
by correspondence course
we can find the love we need we only
require two friends or
even just one to get by many people
might be cruel
but a few are infinitely compassionate
and kind
and we can go out and find them and not
let them go
we don't have to stick by the script we
thought we'd be following all our lives
we might have wanted to do so but we are
profoundly flexible creatures
when we arrived on the earth our mental
wiring was loose enough that we could
have developed into
excellent foragers in the kalahari
desert or latin scholars in a university
or accountants in the logistics industry
our biology
is elastic we may have lost a little of
that primordial flexibility and latitude
it might no longer be so easy for us to
pick up new languages or physical moves
but we remain eminently equipped to
acquire new tricks
other people interesting noble other
people have been here before us
there have been exiled russian princes
who learned how to become tennis
teachers
emma gray south vietnamese army generals
who started american kindergartens
divorcees who remarried shamed
executives who opened flourishing corner
shops
in order to increase our chances of
fulfillment we need to
feed and massage our imaginations
whatever way we happen to be living
we should constantly force ourselves to
picture different
more arduous but still bearable ways to
be
we could think about how we might
survive without any friends
without a reputation without health
without any love
without much money as part of their
creative writing classes
adolescents should be asked to produce
narratives titled
if i lost everything and had to start up
again i might
dot dot dot they could be asked to make
a list of the
20 things that currently make life
meaningful
and then have to cross them all off and
find 10 more
only a few of us will ever need to write
short stories for a living
very many of us will be called upon by
fate
to rewrite the stories of our lives
that is the true destiny and function of
the imagination
when we're very sad we should be
provoked by the intellectual puzzle
before
us how else might we get by given how
many possibilities have been
closed to us how could we fertilize the
dung heap
we are on our challenge is to learn to
rebuild our futures intelligently and
creatively
on the ruins of our old lives
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and often neglected areas of life
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