I have been reading a lot of books about writing recently, including revisits to all my favorites. I have alarmingly misplaced my cherished paperback of Ray Bradbury’s precious Zen in the Art of Writing, and desperate for the poetry of Ray’s words, I broke out the audiobook.
Through serendipity, when I got back from the store and switched off the ignition, the last thing the narrator said was:
Do we want the stars? We can have them!
The context was a passage about the power of imagination and how every advance began with an idea, especially of late an idea in a science-fiction story. Do we want to journey to the stars? It’s no coincidence that a lot of rocket scientists were exposed to a lot of space stories in their formative years.
We can have the stars if we want them. I love that thought! The imagination has enormous power — that was the basis of the first novel I published, The Imaginary Bomb. Humanity has the ability to turn anything we can imagine into reality, and we’ve been doing that through all time.
Of course, any superpower can be used for good or for evil, and all too often the trophy goes to those who imagine a darker world. But we also can have the stars — that’s where Ghandi was going when he said, “Be the change you wish to see in the world.”
Others have said “You become what you think about” and encouraged us to focus on the light. As my friend and mentor the Apostle Paul said, “Whatever is true, whatever Is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable — if anything is excellent or praiseworthy — think about such things.”
Or, to sum up, if we want the stars, we can have them.
