Is Imagination the Key to Inspiration?

Last year on Valentine’s Day, I was on a business trip and experienced a weather cancelation on the return from Boston to Chicago. I had no plans that night except to take a left upon leaving the hotel. When thrown an itinerary curveball, letting the universe decide rarely disappoints. I stumbled on JK Rowling’s Harvard Commencement speech at the bookstore in Harvard Square, sat and read it at a bar nearby and negotiated a reservation for dinner at Harborside. I was so moved, particularly by one quote from her speech: 

“Unlike any other creature on this planet, human beings can learn and understand without having experienced. They can think themselves into other people’s places. Of course, this is a power like my brand of fictional magic that is morally neutral. One might use such a power to manipulate and control, just as much to understand or sympathize. And many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably in the bounds of their own experience never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are. They can refuse to hear screams or peer inside cages. They can close their hearts and minds to any suffering that does not touch them personally. They can refuse to know. I might be tempted to envy people who can live that way, except that I do not think that they can have any fewer nightmares than I do.” 

Those words came off the page, drifted into my ears like flute music and I felt that a lot of my existence was explained. There is nothing more I thrive on than begin able to see what’s behind a stranger’s eyes. I have taken entire trips based on a conversation with a random stranger telling me their itinerary on a flight. I’m sometimes late to, or miss commitments completely, to stop and listen to a person’s story. If they let me a glimpse inside, I usually look for the pain, how I can lessen it and provide a hug, a kind word, or what’s needed to get one step further in what ever direction they need to go. 

Until that moment, I had never viewed myself as imaginative. How did I go all these years without connecting empathy with imagination? 

As I started walking toward dinner, I saw a homeless woman and decided to sit with her, take her sign and take her place for a short time. It was a humbling experience watching people walk by and “refuse to know". She was a lovely woman with a story. Parts of it much like mine and parts I have only tried to imagine. I’m not sure I helped her in anyway, but she did help me.

Since that day, and all that has transpired in all of our universes since, I have tried to improve using my imagination. Improving means asking what is needed rather telling others what I think they need and not ever being too busy or privileged for another. The words ‘refuse hear the screams and peer inside the cages’ shook me to my core.

Almost a year later, I look forward to hearing the screams (most days). Those are the days we make a difference. Each time I do let myself hear, there is a lesson and a gift. Many people don’t want to let anyone in. Getting the narrative right on what is not being said, well, that can take a great deal of imagination. Using all of your senses to really, really listen to a colleague or customer or stranger who isn’t in your “realm” can reignite your imagination and you just might be providing the key that ‘unlocks their cage’, give them the inspiration to take the next step or unlocks your own cage without even knowing it.