October 11, 2026

By Arthur H. Gunther III

thecolumnrule.com

Imagination is the lifelong daydream that might have gotten you a teacher’s frown in the third grade but also pushed those like Tom Edison to illuminate the world. In fact, imagination is light itself, poring from whomever you are or want to be.

A kid I knew well – as a kid myself – tripped over many heaving small-town sidewalks day-dreaming on imaginary excursion.

In pre-school/kindergarten days, everything is about imagination. No walls from structure, however needed as we grow. No barriers as to “what if” or “why not?” In time, with book learning and adult examples, imagination is restrained, necessary for orderly life.

Merriam-Webster defines imagination as “the act or power of forming a mental image of something not present to the senses or never before wholly perceived in reality.” So not the same old, same old. It is creativity, resourcefulness and the thinking of an active mind.

If children’s limitless imagination continued beyond the constraints of society and norms, it might challenge artificial intelligence.

A woman I knew, then a young female, was sometimes so lost in thought that she surely was on an imaginary bus to her own house of imagination. You could ask her a question, and there would be no acknowledgement beyond her gaze. Where did she go? Was her life shaped by such excursion, bettered perhaps?

Life must be structured; yet we must travel our own roads as well. Some for thousands of hours in a lifetime, storing the trips in a house of imagination like clothes in the closet. Each day, we chose what we are in the moment, pulling from the closet.

The writer is a retired newspaperman.

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