Stimulating Imagination
The first step in moving individuals and society toward any sort of real change involves imagination — the creative and hopeful awareness that things can be different than they are. In this first stage, there’s no need for detailed descriptions and fine-tuned policy statements. As we energize people to address climate change, the imagined world doesn’t even need to be one where the crisis of global warming is solved. Simply helping folk to the realization that “another world is possible” — any other world — opens the door to fresh awareness and action. Turning on that sort of imagination frees us from the trap of denial and despair.
Imagination: the beautiful flight of transcendence! When it takes off from the midst of real stories of hardship, frustration, loss and limits it is able to help communities find what is still possible; and to find what potential exists in even some of the hardest of scenarios. The ability to plot a different ending is the gift of freedom. Sharing those stories in the commitment to change is the skill we most need to reclaim… And as we imagine may we move beyond words to become the climate of change we desire.