Imagination

I have about 10 minutes of high brain power left, and as I was writing an essay that was due probably two weeks ago, I had a minor breakthrough. 

A while back, before I started this blog, I was exploring the imagination.  I tend to have an over-active one, which is probably why I have about 13 novels and only one finished.  *heavy sigh*  Anyways, I wanted to know more about the imagination, because it is such a huge part of my life. 

I did some research regarding the word imagination.  For the benefit of the public, I will restate my research briefly.  If you break down the English word, you get image.  So from that I deduced that imagination had something to do with images.  That eased my mind a lot.  I have a lot of pictures in my head. 

Now, since I studied Latin rather vigorously for four years, I had to know the Latin/Greek derivative from which we get imagination or image.  It turns out that they both come from the Latin word imago, which means image.  Big surprise there.  But there was another word that was a little closer to imagination that I latched onto:  imaginatio.  This word means fancy.  Not fancy as in gaudy and over-dressed, but as in...oh think England about the 1700's.  It was often used when a man and woman had affections for one another.  Moving on. 

Based on those definitions, I came to conclude that an imagination was thoughts that were pictures in the mind.  (Or in our high-tech society, videos)

Anyhow, now that you have my preliminary research, let me move on to what I discovered in my overdue essay.  (Now that I have two minutes left on my brain power.) 

I was thinking about imagination, since that's what my paper was on, and I had this thought:  why
were all the greatest musicians, artists, theater stars, etc. all in ancient history?  Why are their works considered classics?  Why did they make it big even to today, centuries after they died?  The answer I came up with was this:  they all had vast stores of imagination and creativity. 

If you go to a movie theater, half the trailers and previews for movies are either aliens invading and there's only a few humans left, or some evil organization trying to take over the world.  There is little else.  I personally find this disturbing and sad.  Why can't screenwriters come up with original plots?  I realize that this might be a bit of a generalization.  After all, there was quite a diverse sampling of movies at the Oscars this year.  However, will these movies stand the test of time? 

That is a question I can't answer.  But I know that everyone on this earth has an imagination to some extent.  That means that anyone can dream up a good plot line, or a new invention, or whatever.  So to all my readers, I offer this encouragement:  use that imagination!  If you don't you'll waste it and the world will be without your amazing talents and imaginings.  That would be a shame. 

(EDIT:  I just realized that I finished this as a draft.  It was started at 12:50am and my internet shuts off at 1am, so sorry if that little mention about the time was confusing. xP)