Forte Of Imagination

Imagination is probably one of the greatest assets of mankind. It is, in fact, the lifeline of human development. A comparison between imagination and experience, however, requires deep thought. Experience is the result of prior imaginations, good or bad. I believe that a balance between the imagination and experience can yield more benefits than each individually.

 

Experience comes to us with maturity, which may or may not be dependent on age. The diversity and depth of past events heard, seen or personally experienced contribute to it. Experience has the ability to shape one’s habits and a collection of habits becomes one's attitude. Although experience does not guarantee success, say in a new project, but it saves from at least a few pitfalls. Young fledglings are definitely more enthusiastic than an old person, but they are also more prone to make drastic decisions. The channelization of energy in imagination gives the best results when it is supervised by experience.

 

Furthermore, imagination is present in most of the fertile brains. What is required is the mentoring of that brain. For example, when companies recruit new graduate students, the students undergo probation. The probation, apart from training the graduates in their required field of work, also aims at channelizing their abilities. The abilities of a graduate are constantly mentored and at the end of the training, they are assigned areas that they have found to be best at, be it research and development, manufacturing, quality control or marketing. But an individual trainee is too naive to decide what is best for him because he has the imagination required to work in a particular field, but the mentor knows better where he will shine. Hence, later frustrations are possibly eliminated.

 

In the field of science and technology, imagination is the seed of development. But only imagination does not guarantee success. The feasibility of a project depends on multiple parameters, and imagination is just a part of it. It is my experience, that one comes to know about various limiting factors inherently involved, not explicitly visible but implied. For example, discoveries regarding nuclear science, cloning, missile technology, they all start a debate among people. A young imaginative person may think public concern as illogical, but every research has some social responsibilities and consequences. To tackle these responsibilities with care comes with experience, wherein the research continues, without any significant fuss.

 

Today youth is much interested in politics too, which is a good thing in itself. Young leaders are coming up, with their own enthusiastic plans and proposals, which are crafted to attract others, especially the youth. They undoubtedly have some sound proposals, but again some of these proposals are naive. For example, the idea of teaching without a physical teacher is a very laudable approach for rural parts where the access of quality teachers is not possible. But, without the presence of a physical teacher, will the students get adequate personal attention, will they get that school environment, will they be motivated enough to go and face an online teacher? Experience may show certain hurdles in this approach. This approach is no doubt very progressive, aimed at improving education chances for the underprivileged, changing the dimensions of habits and attitude of the past for education; but also requires an experienced eye.

 

 One may argue that most of the discoveries made are a result of imagination. For example, the discovery of benzene ring structure by Kekule, the special theory of relativity of Einstein and others. That is very true, but serendipity has its own limitations. Only imagination makes us an object of hit and trial. We all know, the number of experiments needed to bring out a substantial scientific discovery. Many times, the projects are later found to be ill-conceived, or past experience could have been used to refine them. But the argument may come that how can one succeed in the first run? The answer would be a thorough analysis of the past, considering the available resources of the present and a balanced imagination, are the mix for a feasible project. Even though the first-timer is all set to contribute his share, through his imagination and change the established habit and attitude, experience teaches him how far can or should he stretch.

 

Hence, I believe imagination goes hand-in-hand with experience, except in the fields where there is no prior record. Sometimes experience gives newer impetus to the imagination even, allowing greater refining and development of thoughts and processes of earlier times. Experience, in fact, is the doorway to a matured imagination for bearing more fruitful results.