Cheers to the Imagination

What I love about reading is the privilege of getting inside the head of the protagonist. For example, Toby Veck or "Trotty" in Charles Dickens' story The Chimes. Toby was an odd character with poverty on the brain, and his station in life. Not to blame him, of course, that was the rule of the day in the middle 1800's in Britain.

However, that rule led him to measure everything that happened to him against it. He was poor and therefore "born bad". Always the same conclusion. Reading through his eyes, or footsteps, you really experience the writer's intent. Exploring the complexity of the human experience through the eyes of another human. Makes us feel normal for having dirty thoughts. Mean thoughts. Insecurities. It connects us all, all in the privacy of our own favorite reading spot.

Sure, we can experience POV (point of view) in a movie but somehow, it's not the same. There's much left to the imagination in a book. You get to draw some of your own conclusions. Fill in some of the blanks the way YOU see them. It makes for a fun journey.

Now imagine you're the writer. You're the spin doctor. The Wizard of Oz. The puppet master. And what fun it is to set up a story. Leaving breadcrumbs in a mystery novella. Deciding who loves and who doesn't in a romance novel. Who lives and who dies in an action story.

What a stage we set to purge our pasts, live out our dreams, flip the scripts on our own disappointments. If you let it, it can be a playground where imagination is king. And the past is dead. Long live imagination!