Illusions and Imagination

When making this blog, I stumbled a lot on my username-- what unique combination of 16 alphanumeric characters would capture the essence that is me? I finally decided to recycle my LiveJournal username-- precious_sparks. It's a coinage of two songs that mean(t) a lot to me-- Precious Illusions by Alanis Morissette and Spark by Tori Amos.

Today, I decided to listen to Precious Illusions after a long while, and it got me thinking.

Two things that, even today, saves me at times from being pessimistic, are my imagination and the illusions I hold (I think this is true for most people, even though they might not admit it). Now something I wonder from a semantic point of view-- what really is the difference between an illusion and an imaginary flight. I guess the sensible thing would be to look in a dictionary, right?

Straight out of Mirriam Webster:
Illusion
A misleading image presented to the vision (2): something that deceives or misleads intellectually b (1): perception of something objectively existing in such a way as to cause misinterpretation of its actual nature

Imagination
a creation of the mind ; especially : an idealized or poetic creation b: fanciful or empty assumption

What I take away from this is that an imaginatory flight could, at times, be a compilation and weaving of many illusions. So really, they could be the same thing. Or not. Either way, I think there's a very thin line between the two words. Not that this is completely relevant for where I wanted to take this post.

I'll be very honest here...I let my imagination run amok a lot. I wish for things that I know have a 0.000000000001% chance of happening, but I still think about and brood over what-ifs till they almost seem alive and plausible. Probably not one of the smarter things I do, because the jolt to reality (when it finally makes its way past all the fluff and imagination) is rather rough, but it's almost worth it because I have so much fun creating those highly exaggerated, idealized settings in my head.

Illusions and imaginations are things that people cling to when they are the most defenseless, the most vulnerable to the world around them. In a very dynamic, unpredictable setting like college, they're a particular comfort when you can't even express what's bothering you in words, even if you want to. It's so much easier to ignore it in your little idealized world.

Children are particularly adept at their imagination-- it runs like crazy and the most mundane things become the most enchanting, most riveting thing they've ever seen...it's something I envy a lot in children. To a child, the world around them is limitless in the possibilities it holds-- if you want to make the arrangement of chairs made while your mother vacuums a spaceship, well guess what-- it is now.

I've spent a lot of time lately reflecting on how my imaginatory flights have altered from those fanciful flights to what I do these days. And frankly, my imagination runs in a very boring way. It just glorifies the world around me in a very feasible way, which is kind of boring. I mean, it's realistic, and it's probably good that I don't think like a 5 year old, but at the same time, I miss the excitement of imagining. Now imagining an idealized world is always accompanied by an undercurrent of vague dissatisfaction knowing that even if you have the power to make what you imagine happen, it's going to require a lot of work before you're truly happy with what you have.

I don't mean to sound pessimistic here-- in fact, in general I think I'm optimistic to the point it's kind of bad sometimes. But I digress.

I guess I'm just sad that my imagination and the flights it takes no longer hold the magicalness and realness that it held for me when I was younger, and I miss it.

And who knows, maybe some of the illusions and imaginations I hold might become a reality, and I can, for a little while at least, be that little 5 year old whose imagination made my little corner of the world a much happier place.