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We’ve Left Little to Imagination (Essay)
Wednesday, 18 February, 2026
We’ve Left Little to Imagination Uninspired creative endeavors are not faults of potential but culture. Cloudless deep blue sky. Green coated hillsides. Calm ocean glimmering under a warm sun. A good day for a hike. Others were of similar mind, parents and kids and friends relishing the beauty and the day. Some wore t-shirts and shorts, some leggings, tank tops, pants. And some wore colored spandex so form-fitting even bills would reveal their value. Passing one such woman markedly sculpted by spandex, the thoroughness of the impact of the last several decades coalesced into a singular understanding. Though we gradually desensitize to the ever-infringed upon demarcation of now archaically-perceived propriety, the bright sun and clear ocean air showed it plainly. In our current age of progressive enlightenment, some decision was made that everything must be stated, everything must be qualified, everything must be shown. As necklines plunged and hemlines shortened, modesty and privacy became so unknown they currently border on the fantastical. Is it any wonder then that true creativity is feeling more and more uncommon, considering we’ve left little to imagination? Imagine a gift, artfully wrapped. Take a moment to see it, paper, card, bow, precise folds, and all. What’s inside? It could be air or a pebble or a key that leads to a train, plane, the power of rain. Sense the possibility? The mystery? The chance for any single or series of items to be awaiting your eyes? Until the box is opened, anything could be inside. Then it can be admired, appreciated, valued, but it can also only be what it is. Imagine a gift, artfully wrapped. Take a moment to see it, paper, card, bow, precise folds, and all. Notice the corner? The paper is ripped just a bit, enough to peek at what awaits your eyes. Do you catch the edge of a design? The point of an image? The fractured angle of a letter? Until the box is opened, anything could be inside, though the mystery is not quite the same, as a clue narrows the possibility. Still, it could be a good many things. Imagine a gift, wrapped only with a bow. Exciting, but it’s clear what awaits your eyes. Do you take it out right away? Maybe. Do you put it aside, because there’s no mystery to uncover, no guess to confirm? Perhaps. Do you imagine what else it could be? Probably not. Once you know what it is, you don’t regard it quite the same. Imagine man throughout the ages in different states of wrapping. Then think of how much has changed once we stopped closing doors, stopped covering up, stopped being subtle. In just another push to progress ourselves right into eternal, unmitigated happiness and freedom, we became more and more explicit in language, in dress, in art, in literature, in entertainment. The easier everything became to access, for any number of excuses from “education” to “we’re all adults here,” the less need there was for our minds to conjure what we couldn’t see. How much is there to imagine when everything is right in our line of sight? The result of such changes is most often noticed in the various possibilities of creative output. One dominant tendency is to imitate or rework what’s already been created, repackaging instead of reinventing. While that could lead to some unique creative endeavors, it’s difficult to call the same rose by another name just to make it appear as something else. The other inclination most often revealed is that when someone wants to garner notice, they no longer do so through an admirable, “Here’s what I’ve done,” but something more akin to, “Look at this body I have! Like this and this and this!” Such is the machination of a disingenuous illusionist, who seeks to distract from what’s real with shock and morbid fascination rather than true wonderment and value. It fixes the viewer’s eyes on something he can’t bring himself to look away from, so he doesn’t realize he’s not seeing anything interesting, intriguing, or intelligent at all. These approaches lead to underdeveloped creativity and people unable to bring life to empty spaces. Both hamper imagination, and thereby human innovation and achievement. Imagination is defined by its ability to range, to explore unmoored and unfettered, to envision what else could be. When everything is known, and in such sharp focus too, what is left for the mind to wonder about? What motivates creative endeavors, when the eye is so overstimulated by continual, concentrated bombardments of noise over substance? At times there is an advantage to knowing what a thing is, to spending hours, months, years exploring its entirety, usually in regard to what matters most in life, faith, meaning, relationships, and the like. For these, and similar, solidity is more important than imagining, so the more focus on what we have, the stronger, more resilient it can become. Moreover, this is specifically possible for things that truly matter because they have already been deemed worthy and good by the Infinite. Further exploration doesn’t just uncover more, but also how much more could be because it intrinsically contains that quality. These are things which strengthen and endure as long as the discovery never bottoms out, the knowing never plateaus, the search for more uncovers greater depths. Thus, the concern for imagination isn’t about individual potential, but society overall, the majority of designers, writers, filmmakers, entertainers, the ones who unwrapped the box bit by bit, unraveling the mystery, the compulsion to know more. As they unwrapped each layer in attempts to outdo the level of before, it wasn’t just the unknown laid bare, but imagination itself. They tried to hide the undesired effects with oversized, glittering bows, presenting the obvious with forced razzle dazzle, so no one would notice they weren’t presenting much at all. In making everything known, the excitement of discovery frayed, our perception of the unknown shifted. Why explore, why imagine, when there’s no mystery, no reward for stages reached and levels earned? No delayed gratification, no commitment, nothing more than a screen or a word or an absence of fabric. No longer is there the length, breadth, depth of infinite when a thing has been stripped to its most finite. Another prevailing fallout is apathy, oft mistaken for acceptance or maturity, instead of the rewiring of how our minds and bodies should healthily react to what was once kept covered or enclosed. To the point, live on a nudist colony long enough and the clothed will appear abnormal. How easily we forgot, even scorned, the standards that once were with the distance of time and numbing. We scoff at the stiffness, the suffocation of the world past, yet, can we really say that certain modicums of respect, curtesy, and social norms were worth paying off just so we could dishonestly call less more? The evolution, rather devolution, of the bathing suit is a prime example. Already the bathing suit of the late 1800s was considered scandalous for the amount it bared a woman’s legs, then the early 20th century brought the bikini, from the French Riviera, of course. Even then, the pearl-clutching design that bared midriffs was only the beginning, as Hollywood starlets unsurprisingly help popularize and mainstream the style, and swimwear became even skimpier from there. Whatever excuses or explanations for the advent of the so-called fashion, from wartime fabric rationing to innovations in materials to bodily freedom, none explain why we’re not rightfully honest about what is essentially water durable undergarments, which should be treated as such. They should not be worn, they should not be worn in mixed crowds, and they should certainly be blamed for creating double standards of styles meant to arrest the eye then condemn the eye they capture. And if there’s any instinct of contention, think of how people walk, talk, and pose while wearing one. Think of how it’s all meant to attract notice. In that vein, examine any photo of deliberate body staging, for social media, advertisements, red carpets, and the like. Regardless of how much, or little, someone is wearing, don’t let the image distract from a very important detail in many, many of these photos. Look at the pose. Look at what message it sends. Look at the eyes and ask how many appear beautiful in face and body but dead or shallow in depth of expression? In exposing all, we’ve smothered our consciences and emptied our insides of substance. Bikinis, clothing, aren’t the only culprit in revealing more than they should. Of course, there’s less and less discretion when it comes to social media, but for wider industries, as previously discussed, movies and books have followed an essentially similar path as the bathing suit, cutting out substantive material to reveal more and more in a skewed effort to shock, transgress, push boundaries, and incorrectly claim to be fresh and new. Horror and crime can be overly gritty, but there’s no contention romance has mainstreamed what used to be relegated to erotica. Instead of romances portraying something sweet or aspirational, instead of overall writing making much better use of subtlety, romances of today are quick to spend time explicitly describing each step. And while some may accuse the former of being fantasy, the same is even truer of the latter, not least for the fetishism woven throughout. Perhaps this only happens in a society that decided everything has be to revealed, then luxuriated in the validation of similarly-minded people. Perhaps this happens in a society where real relationships between men and women have been attacked, then sidelined, for something, ironically, entirely of imagination. This sort of imagining has not been of benefit to us. Other reasons may compel a people to stop imagining, reasons much more insidious and malicious in outcome and intent. Those more advanced in years may rely less on imagination, because they’ve settled into the final bend, and feel no further need to dream a future they won’t live in. But for the young, what could halt their dreaming when they have so many years yet to live? After all, dreams of the night are for sorting the mind, but dreams of the day are for the future. But why would a young person dream if he has no surety of tomorrow? Before anyone blames this on policy or politics, think hard on how the issue roots deeper than the current argument of the day, more symptom than cause for the end of dreaming. The young have been told for decades that they’re powerless, hopeless, and hapless in the face of the inevitable end the past has precipitated. They’ve intentionally been taught naught to little of what truly drove men to build, of what inspired innovation that changed the world, of the ripple effects of groundbreaking or consequential invention. Without such lesson and context, there remains little reliable foundation for dreaming. And without dreams of day, dark thoughts easily cloud a bright tomorrow, leaving empty, soulless minds scrambling for succor and a stable ledge from which to launch their dreams. But they can dream! They can rebuild! Sure they can, but will they? How many are motivated to do so when the dust coating their vision isn’t from construction but demolition? Even as they’re encouraged to make history, they’re simultaneously being shown its destruction, as if they won’t somehow understand that if the very foundation of their world can be demolished then anything can be. Despite the obsession with history, the past isn’t honestly studied, but rather treated like a rage room where what’s dead goes to be broken. Why build today if it’ll only be condemned and destroyed tomorrow? There is no drive to create legacy where everything is deliberately upended. Neither is there incentive to imagine something incredible, to reach for the greatest achievement when they don’t believe it’ll be allowed to last. How can they when they were only taught to tear down or imitate the accepted instead of build up or create something new? How can they when all that was long upheld as the best and most admirable has been crushed and melted down? The point of achievement is undermined when no one can agree on what’s good and right and worthy and beautiful. It can be gutting to build and dream and imagine for a world they’re been told will no longer be. It’s even more difficult to invest if there’s no one for whom to build. Even more, throughout their young lives, they’ve been constantly bombarded with the current crisis framed by rage and panic, by hysteria and histrionics falsely forming fatal threats to the certainty of tomorrow. Shrieking desperation may attract attention and news stories, but it also turns the future into a precarious spaghetti-fling with questionable, unproven solutions. Instead of an upbeat message of the future is yours if you build it!, the young are frightened into believing the world can disappear in any moment which lacks monumental change. Who wouldn’t retreat into the safely compacted world of the screen, into numbing, mindless scrolling? Who wouldn’t hide away in inanities or wholly performative emotions? Who could, and not eventually suffer for it? The worlds they retreat to instead are controlled landscapes rendered by pixels and prompts, easily manipulated or redesigned with a few keystrokes. Soaring and beautiful perhaps, but wholly disconnected from reality, particularly one already replete with so much beauty, from the majestic to the fierce, from the tranquil to the thunderous. These other worlds are not only missing the natural, but even their artistry is lacking the detail and imagination of a human hand, worlds wholly unlike those built by men whose visions were shaped by the feel of soil between their fingers, rather than the bright, and often false, colors of mimicry. Of course, the true cause and solution is rooted in the same truth as most ills of society, the careful, surgical removal of the Infinite, which once defined every contour of life and assured tomorrow. The young have not been taught to look up and beyond. They haven’t been pointed toward the aspirational and inspirational which well outlasts the lives of mortal men. They haven’t been told how a single small action matters, even if no one notices, even if no effect is seen, simply because everything matters in the totality of the Grand Design for Creation. Anger is fleeting and exhausting, Divinity is fulfilling and everlasting. Potential dreamers have been denied the greatest gift of mankind walking on two legs, whose natural line of sight is the horizon. How easy it is to look up from there, but only if you haven’t been beaten until your neck only curves down. Only if you haven’t given your brain over to a device, instead of given your mind over to devising. And yet, despite all that has been done, there will always be imagination. As long as there is a soul in a body somewhere, the spark of the Infinite will drive a man to reach beyond his self, in creativity, in refinement, in imagining how things could be better. We must keep reminding others of that. We must keep weaving dreams of day. We must keep directing their gazes up. Imagine the world that would be.
