Few things are more fascinating than the imagination. The ability to conjure something that doesn’t exist, that might not even seem possible, and bring it to life - is (no big deal) the whole story of how anything in this world has been built, including nature!* Every system we live inside of, every business we admire, hate, or depend on; every law we follow, every relationship we keep, was first imagined by someone - or by a few someones - and then became real.

The big issue here is that we've stopped using it. Somewhere along the way, the system we were born into started to feel like a fact rather than a choice. Like gravity, like weather, like something that simply is. And once that happens, imagination shrinks to fit the shape of what already exists, losing its ability to travel beyond that shape anymore. 

We can still picture our lives as slightly better versions of the lives we're already living. We picture our work as slightly more efficient, or ‘more free’, or ‘more fair’ versions of the work we already do. We can picture our economies as slightly cleaner versions of the economies that are quietly ruining the world.

But that’s just extrapolating, not imagining.

Imagination is step zero in regeneration

It’s the harder, slower, almost forgotten practice of sitting with the possibilities beyond our immediate realities, with the trust that what we are able to picture will one day be real.