Isn't It Funny

Imagination Springs Hope Eternal

Isn't it strange you just assume that some things in life will happen? I always assume that i'm going to get married one day, to a man whom i love above all else. I assume that i will have children, find a job that i will enjoy, be happy in life. That i won't get seriously sick, that my children will be healthy, that we will have enough money to live off. These are all assumptions that are really based on nothing concrete. At eighteen, there's nothing that would let me know that i will one day receive any of these things. Yet, i don't see anything else in my future. Not having these things is almost an unfathomable idea to me.

But there are smaller things in life that i always assume will come about. I don't know why, but i do. It's all the fault of my imagination. Inside my head, the i can tame the wiles of fate and determine my own destiny. In my imagination, things go wrong, but nothing so wrong as to derail the life that i've always assumed that i will have.

In my imagination, i earn my law degree, whether or not i go on to use it. In reality, i take my degree one day at a time and am ecstatic with a pass. In reality, i have serious doubts that i'll complete the degree. In reality, it's very likely that i will transfer from the behavioural science part of my degree, into arts. It's even possible that, should my law grades fall below par, i shall transfer from that too. I really don't know. In reality, the next few years of my education are uncertain at best. So where i've pulled the idea that i shall complete the degree from is far beyond me.

In my imagination, i meet the man of my dreams and live happily ever after. Granted, even in my imagination, i do not have to get to my happily ever after without my fair share of trials and tribulations (even i am not that wrapped up in my fantasy world). But in reality, i don't know that there is even such a thing as a happily ever after. Is the statistic now that one in three marriages ends in divorce? Whatever it is, it's not favourable. Even when there is no divorce, between death, illness, adultery and other ailments, there really is not much chance of a happy ending. Perhaps it is only in my imagination that people can live out their fairy tale.

In my imagination, the boys that i meet who are lovely and who treat me like a princess become my closest friends and confidants. They don't leave me, they don't hurt me, they don't sit me up on the shoulders of the world and then push it out from under me. In reality, this is usually the way things seem to unfold. In reality, hopes for a future are born from moments where the sun seems to shine more brightly than usual, but reality doesn't let hopes get further than that; hopes are simply that - a hope. Not a foundation. Reality kicks hopes butt.

In my imagination, if i stay in the shelter of my room, with the blinds drawn and my music playing, reality can't touch me. But reality can find it's way into even the most secure of places. I've got to say that having an imagination really makes reality more bearable. When it all seems oh-so-gloomy, an imagination can bear you away on the wings of hope. Hope, though often dashed by reality, will still serve it's purpose in keeping your spirits out of the depths of despair.

It still makes no sense that i make these assumptions for my future. With nothing to base them on and with damning evidence that life will, in fact, turn out to the contrary, i've really got no reason to continue assuming. But that is the point of imagination. Imagination is what lets us hope, is what allows us to assume. Without imagination, all seems bleak. Imagination is really the key to keeping going. I imagine that you all have at least the tiniest spark of it in you - and i hope that you can blow on that spark, so that you can have a full blown imagination like mine to get you through the tail end of winter.

Annabel