Imagination vs. Reality

Samuel Johnson said, “The use of travelling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.” And haven’t we all dreamed of a faraway land, only to be slightly disappointed upon arrival? Or perhaps we’ve experienced the opposite: expected nothing, and felt everything. I’ve been let down before, by great cities and famous monuments. I’ve also fallen in love with places I didn’t know existed until the day before, fallen in love with whole countries I had written off too soon.

We use imagination to spark our wanderlust, but it is reality that brings us back on the road time and time again. We crave the reality. We crave the different and the true, the things that shake our beliefs, the things that force us to think with new minds, force us to see with new eyes. We pick up what is in front of us, we make it whole and real. We make it a tangible thing, no longer scrambled amongst our perceptions or our assumptions. We stop thinking of how things may be, and we start seeing them for what they are. We let ourselves get lost in the real, we let ourselves forget what we know, we open up our arms and our eyes and our minds and our hearts and take it all in. And that, that is so much better than anything our imaginations could ever create.