He asked
playfully, “You have a grill, don’t you?”
She
answered, “Yes.”
He
continued, “You have cheese, don’t you?”
“Yes, we
do.”
“You have
bread, don’t you?”
“Yes.
“Well,” he
said, “I’ll have a grilled cheese sandwich.”
Three years
old. (You may think his parents should have taught him better manners, but
please don’t let that keep you from seeing the marvel of this small child’s
imagination.)
The smiling
server returned after checking with the chef and told the boy they would be
happy to fix him the sandwich. “But I forgot to ask you what you want to
drink,” she said.
“I’ll have a
milkshake, please.”
“I’m sorry,
Jonathon, but we don’t serve milkshakes,” she answered. But this time she was
ready for him. “Now, it is true we have milk. And it is true we have ice cream.
But we don’t have syrup,” she explained.
He laughed.
“You have a car, don’t you?”
There’s
always a solution. Whatever other intellectual gifts Jonathon seems to have,
the trait that may serve him best is imagination. He has the valuable ability
to imagine a solution to whatever problem comes his way.
Albert
Einstein famously said, “Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life’s
coming attractions.” In other words, what we can see in our imagination today
we may experience in life tomorrow. He also said, “Imagination is more
important than knowledge.” He knew that we humans are limited by how much we
can learn, but we are never limited by how much we can imagine.
I have come
to realize that I am held back far more by my lack of imagination than by my
circumstances. When I believe nothing can be done, I search for a way OUT of
the difficulty when I OUGHT to be searching for solutions. How can I change
anything when I’m looking for a way out? When I perceive my situation as
impossible, I resign myself to that fate and give up.
But WHAT IF
I were to look at it differently? WHAT IF I approached it in a different way?
WHAT IF a creative answer could actually be found? I often settle for less when
I should be asking myself powerful questions that begin with the words “what
if. . .”
Some two
hundred years ago a class of noisy boys in a German primary school was assigned
a task to keep them busy. They were instructed to add up all the numbers from 1
to 100. The children settled down, scribbling busily on their slates -- all but
one. This boy looked off into space for a few moments, then wrote something on
his slate and turned it in. His was the only right answer. When the amazed
teacher asked how he did it, he said he wondered if there might be some
shortcut. He went on to say, “I found one: 100 plus one is 101; 99 plus two is
101; 98 plus three is 101, and, if I continued the series all the way to 51
plus 50, I have 101 fifty times, which is 5,050.”
The teacher
decided then that this child needed special tutoring. The boy was Karl
Friedrich Gauss, and he became a great mathematician of the 19th century.
Gauss solved
his problem when he asked himself the question, “What if there is a shortcut?”
Two of the most powerful words I know are “what if.”
The solution
to my problem, the way through a dilemma or the beginning of that next creative
change in my life almost always starts when I decide that I am NOT locked in.
“What if” questions release my imagination so I can better see what was hidden.
Imagination
is everything. And what if I were to use the words “what if” more often? I can
only imagine what might happen.
-- Steve Goodier
