Daily Inspiration: Neil Gaiman on Daydreaming
On Monday, October 14, 2013 in a lecture about the importance of reading and libraries for the Reading Agency at the Barbican in London, fantasy writer Neil Gaiman explained why daydreaming is integral, not just to the of the creative process, but to the of the entire human race.
He said:
"We all – adults and children, writers and readers – have an obligation to daydream. We have an obligation to imagine. It is easy to pretend that nobody can change anything, that we are in a world in which society is huge and the individual is less than nothing: an atom in a wall, a grain of rice in a rice field. But the truth is, individuals change their world over and over, individuals make the future, and they do it by imagining that things can be different."
Adding:
"Look around you: I mean it. Pause, for a moment and look around the room that you are in. I’m going to point out something so obvious that it tends to be forgotten. It’s this: that everything you can see, including the walls, was, at some point, imagined. Someone decided it was easier to sit on a chair than on the ground and imagined the chair. Someone had to imagine a way that I could talk to you in London right now without us all getting rained on.This room and the things in it, and all the other things in this building, this city, exist because, over and over and over, people imagined things."
Nicely said.
Read Gaiman’s full lecture at The Guardian
GET MORE INSPIRATIONAL GOODNESS HERE.
[Header image: “stop and smell the flowers” by Karin Taylor]
