A Yardstick for Measuring Imagination
There is a question I particularly like.
“What if you had infinite time, infinite money, and infinite ability?”
What I like about this question is how clearly it reveals a person’s capacity for imagination.
In short, it asks you to place yourself in a situation almost impossible to attain in reality—one in which there are no constraints—and makes visible what you would accomplish, and what you would not.
So, how would you answer?
How Deeply the Constraints of Reality Run
In most cases, people will talk about an extension of the reality they already inhabit.
For example, travelling around the world, journeying through space, or booking out your favourite restaurant to throw a birthday party for yourself and no one else… things like that.
There is nothing wrong with any of those, but they fail to make use of the premise of the question at all.
Or perhaps some people would tell you a fantasy.
For example, travelling faster than light, keeping a Facehugger as a pet, or getting one quadrillion subscribers on your YouTube channel… things like that.
There is nothing wrong with those either, but even making full use of the premise of the question would not get you there.
These two kinds of answers are trapped by “reality” from opposite directions.
Merely extending reality is not permitted; nor is simply stepping outside it.
Blending Reality and the Unreal
Imagination is not something born from reality. And yet, being unreal does not in itself demonstrate the existence of imagination.
What matters is the balance between “reality” and “the unreal”—in other words, how the two are blended. That is the core of “imagination”.
So let me ask again.
What if you had infinite time, infinite money, and infinite ability?
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