Make it so

Look under the cover of a great novel and its pages will pull you into another world. There, you’ll experience a fantastic story that changes you forever. Filled with magic, mystery, suspense, action, and love, each carefully scripted phrase will linger in the back of your mind and influence your actions back in the real world.

The real world. Well that sounds boring, doesn’t it? After chasing an imaginative adventure, who wants to drum out their heartbeats in a somewhat boring reality? I do.

Life isn’t dull. I believe there’s a connection between the things we can imagine and the things we can experience. The challenge is discovering what is possible and having the courage to make it so. That part isn’t easy.

In my first post on this blog, I opened with a phrase about crawling out of the Snake River. That day was one of many great adventures of my younger life. As the reality of what I had just survived sank into my system, I promised myself that I would write about it in a book. I never did.

Although I had almost died that day, it turns out that I feared sharing the story more than experiencing the terror of the event. Most people have it the other way around. A part of me wishes I could have been so lucky. Death, it seemed, wanted me badly. As life progressed, my collection of extraordinary experiences grew at such a pace that I was no longer surprised when I faced a mortal challenge. I always survived, though not always unharmed. The old saying is that one could fill a book with everything they’ve lived through. I could fill several.

Still, I never acted on my intentions to write the book. Over time, death grew bored of me and my adventurous reality faded into the expected life of someone who had stopped following their dreams. I had forgotten what adventure was and stopped using my imagination. I even stopped searching for it in books.

The title of this post is “Make it so.” I love the line from Star Trek because it tells us everything we should know about imagination. Don’t just dream about great things; make them happen; search for them. I feel like I’m living again and rebuilding the connection between what I can imagine and what I can experience. I hope you will do the same.