“The fact of possessing imagination means that everything can be re dreamed. Each reality can have its alternative possibilities. Human beings are blessed with the necessity of transformation.”

– Ben Okri

Transformation.  We talk all the time about the way that life changes — from year to year, from day to day, from minute to minute.  Some of that change is physical, and it is driven by the laws of the universe.  We are born tiny and grow larger.  We are young one day and, it seems, old the next.  These realities are part of who we are and how we are made.  We learn through our own experiences and through our observation of others in the world around us that sometimes life has finite limits — limits that we simply accept as real — and we live our days within the boundaries of reality.  Change simply is a part of life.

Transformation is different.  When an outside force impacts the change that drives reality, sometimes we find that reality is transformed.  When these magical moments occur, we find that we also are transformed in the way we view the world.  Although we still live in a changing world, the boundaries of our reality shift and we find that our old views are replaced by new ones — often more hopeful ones than we ever could have imagined.  Storyteller, Ben Okri, tells us that with imagination every reality can be re-dreamed.  Perhaps it is through this re-dreaming that we become a part of transforming our world.

I remember my childhood and the way people considered my grandparents as elderly when they had reached their 70’s.  Now many people continue to work until the age of 70 and nobody blinks an eye.  Through the imaginative dreaming of medical researchers, we now have access to drugs that delay the changes associated with illness and aging.  With discoveries by those who dreamed of good nutrition and its helpful effect on longevity, people are greeting their golden years with vitality and productivity still a part of their lives.  These changes occurred because there were people who dared to dream and dared to imagine a world beyond the confines of their present reality; and we all have been transformed by their ability to see alternative possibilities.

We all have the power to transform our world.  There is always more than one way to view reality; and we need to cultivate the ability to dream something wonderful in each thing we see.  I was looking at the clouds this morning.  Are they barriers that shut out the sun, or are they the bearers of life-giving rain?  The way I choose to dream of the clouds may not make the rain fall, but it certainly will color my own view of their reality.  When we see the changeable nature of the world and the people in it, do we dream the best outcome we can imagine, or do we see things as unchanging and futile and beyond our reach?

We were born to live within the boundaries of reality and to experience the limitations that are part of being human.  We also were born to dream and to hope and to strive — to look beyond the confines of today and stretch the boundaries that will define tomorrow.  Our world desperately needs dreamers, people who will strike the words, “this is how it always has been and always will be,” from their vocabularies.  We need to see the potential, not only for change, but for many possible changes in every challenge we face.  We must dream.  Our future depends on it.