Today begins a new month and a new theme in the Journal Garden: IMAGINE. We’ll be using our creativity to picture what we want to experience and bring about in the world. What are you looking forward to?
In the privacy of your journal, you can be freely, vividly imaginative. But when your imagination is out of practice, you may only picture the future you want to avoid.
So let’s make a distinction: I contend that what we picture when we’re fearful is not coming from imagination, it’s coming from memory. We fear things we have seen or experienced. Our fears connect to traumas — things that have happened before.
Imagination, on the other hand, connects to desires. Imagination shows us things we have yet to experience. We dream up new places and stories and designs.
Fear looks backward, searching for signs that the present leads to the past.
Imagination looks forward, where the future is purely possibility.
The English language helpfully suggests that when you are looking forward to something, you are experiencing happy anticipation. So this journaling prompt is a great place to start if your imagination is feeling rusty:
What are you looking forward to this month?
If that’s easy enough, dive a little deeper:
What would you LOVE to experience in April?
Let your imagination run wild.
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