Graham Boyd

Imagination is a Feeling

Imagination is a feeling. Imagination is feeling the gap between what is and what could be. Innovation is harnessing that feeling as energy to drive action to create desirable “could be” realities. And depression is the state of consciousness triggered when we cannot harness our feelings as energy to create desirable “could be” realities or cannot see desirable “could be” realities. 

When I feel the gap between the polluted, degraded, life-threatening biosphere that is, and the undesirable climate catastrophe and biosphere collapse that could be, I sometimes sink into a depressed state. 

Then my energy and action turns inwards, and I focus on surviving.

Sometimes I feel rage, and then my energy turns outwards, to destroy and punish.

Most of the time I feel hope. Or better said, I choose hope as a strategy, by actively seeing more desirable “could be and ought to be” realities, by feeling gap vs. what is, and harnessing the energy of that feeling to build a bridge for us all to get across the gap.

For 15 years I’ve felt hope seeing the gap between our degenerative economy, built on the reality we’ve invented, turning imagined myths into artifacts. The myths that financial capital is the only capital (there are 5 others), that companies are things to buy and sell (which means all the staff, suppliers, customers, and future generations are bought and sold); and the regenerative reality we ought to build, that I am building, where all companies and people embrace and regenerate (grow) all capitals to grow the desirable reality than can be. And will be, if we all turn the feeling of imagination into creative innovative action.

This perspective on imagination as a feeling spans all aspects of my world, from the largest outer to the deepest inner. I used to rage against my spells of depression, until I saw them as caused by the gap between who I am and who I could be. Now I accept without rage my depressions because I see them and the innovations I’m most proud of as part of one whole, the whole I value most highly: my imagination. 

Graham Boyd is co-author (with economist Jack Reardon) of Rebuild: The Economy, Leadership, and You, a DIY guide to using existing practical building blocks to address our global challenges by building a regenerative, net positive economy, and the Founder of the Evolutesix startup factory, putting this into practice, whose passion is building a bridge to a reality that works for all life on the planet.