Living the Significant Life by Peter L. Hirsch, Robert Shemin Page A
Authors: Peter L. Hirsch, Robert Shemin
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won’t detract from being a good family man, a good Christian, and a good employee. It will enhance those aspects of his life and help him become better at all of them.
We’ll catch up with Brad a little later, but first let’s talk about a key ingredient he’ll need (and so will you) to build a life of significance: imagination.
PRINCIPLE #3
Fire Up Your Imagination
Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.
—Albert Einstein
If one of the foremost thinkers in history was a proponent of using your imagination, who are we to argue?
We’ll even take Einstein’s statement a step further. Without imagination, it’s hard to get anywhere. Imagination is one of the key ingredients for figuring out where you want to go and how to get there.
You might not readily associate the word imagination with Einstein, but it’s surely hard not to associate it with Walt Disney, who had one of the greatest imaginations of our time. As early as the 1940s, as he watched his daughters play on the local merry-go-round, Disney began to dream about a spotlessly clean, well-designed amusement park where both children and their parents could enjoy themselves at the same time. After letting the idea percolate for a few years, he got to work, and by July 1955, Disney had turned 160 acres of Southern California orange groves into Disneyland.
It wasn’t easy. When he had trouble finding financing, Disney emptied his savings account, sold his vacation home, and borrowed against his life insurance to keep his dream alive. But his vision for his park was so strong and so powerful that he was willing to risk everything he’d built to turn it into a reality. Before any of the now familiar attractions—Frontierland, Fantasyland, Tomorrowland—were constructed or even committed to an artist’s sketch pad, they existed in minute detail in Disney’s imagination. And when he launched Walt Disney, Inc., the firm that would eventually design and build Disneyland, he called his employees “imagineers,” because that was the quality he valued most: imagination.
Walt didn’t retire his imagination once Disneyland was completed. When he developed his first television series in 1954, at a time when that medium was still in its infancy, he shot the show in color even though all TV programs were broadcast in black-and-white. Disney had the imagination to envision that someday television would be in color just as films already were, and he’d be ready for it. A short time later, he aired an episode called “Man in Space,” using information supplied by a group of scientists, to provide his viewers with a glimpse into the possibilities of space flight. The program even included the concept of landing a man on the moon. That was in 1955. It would be another five years before the U.S. government even began a space program. That’s imagination.
By the mid-1960s, Disney was quietly buying up hundreds of acres of cypress-covered swampland in central Florida, because his imagination had conceived an even larger, grander theme park that would include hotels, golf courses, an elaborate transportation system, and much more. In the days before his death in 1966, he lay in his hospital bed, using the tiles on the ceiling as a grid to plan what would become the Epcot theme park at Disney World.
Five years later, at the grand opening of the Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando, a reporter was talking with Ron Miller, Disney’s son-in-law, and remarked that it was too bad Walt didn’t live to see this.
“He did,” Miller replied. “That’s why you’re looking at it now.”
Imagination is a critical faculty—one of the mental exercises that keeps the minds of truly successful, happy people young and fresh. Imagination is one of our greatest and, sad to say, least used resources. For some reason, people assume that imagination is the sole province of artists, children, and crazy people. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, William
We’ll catch up with Brad a little later, but first let’s talk about a key ingredient he’ll need (and so will you) to build a life of significance: imagination.
PRINCIPLE #3
Fire Up Your Imagination
Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.
—Albert Einstein
If one of the foremost thinkers in history was a proponent of using your imagination, who are we to argue?
We’ll even take Einstein’s statement a step further. Without imagination, it’s hard to get anywhere. Imagination is one of the key ingredients for figuring out where you want to go and how to get there.
You might not readily associate the word imagination with Einstein, but it’s surely hard not to associate it with Walt Disney, who had one of the greatest imaginations of our time. As early as the 1940s, as he watched his daughters play on the local merry-go-round, Disney began to dream about a spotlessly clean, well-designed amusement park where both children and their parents could enjoy themselves at the same time. After letting the idea percolate for a few years, he got to work, and by July 1955, Disney had turned 160 acres of Southern California orange groves into Disneyland.
It wasn’t easy. When he had trouble finding financing, Disney emptied his savings account, sold his vacation home, and borrowed against his life insurance to keep his dream alive. But his vision for his park was so strong and so powerful that he was willing to risk everything he’d built to turn it into a reality. Before any of the now familiar attractions—Frontierland, Fantasyland, Tomorrowland—were constructed or even committed to an artist’s sketch pad, they existed in minute detail in Disney’s imagination. And when he launched Walt Disney, Inc., the firm that would eventually design and build Disneyland, he called his employees “imagineers,” because that was the quality he valued most: imagination.
Walt didn’t retire his imagination once Disneyland was completed. When he developed his first television series in 1954, at a time when that medium was still in its infancy, he shot the show in color even though all TV programs were broadcast in black-and-white. Disney had the imagination to envision that someday television would be in color just as films already were, and he’d be ready for it. A short time later, he aired an episode called “Man in Space,” using information supplied by a group of scientists, to provide his viewers with a glimpse into the possibilities of space flight. The program even included the concept of landing a man on the moon. That was in 1955. It would be another five years before the U.S. government even began a space program. That’s imagination.
By the mid-1960s, Disney was quietly buying up hundreds of acres of cypress-covered swampland in central Florida, because his imagination had conceived an even larger, grander theme park that would include hotels, golf courses, an elaborate transportation system, and much more. In the days before his death in 1966, he lay in his hospital bed, using the tiles on the ceiling as a grid to plan what would become the Epcot theme park at Disney World.
Five years later, at the grand opening of the Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando, a reporter was talking with Ron Miller, Disney’s son-in-law, and remarked that it was too bad Walt didn’t live to see this.
“He did,” Miller replied. “That’s why you’re looking at it now.”
Imagination is a critical faculty—one of the mental exercises that keeps the minds of truly successful, happy people young and fresh. Imagination is one of our greatest and, sad to say, least used resources. For some reason, people assume that imagination is the sole province of artists, children, and crazy people. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, William
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