Yes, I Feel It, Too. What To Do? Take Imagination Breaks.

More than 92 million people have already cast their votes in this presidential election, according to this morning’s New York Times. The turnout is well out of the ordinary. That does my heart good. 

At the same time, yes, I feel it, too. The tension in the U.S. is ratcheting up—exponentially. You are not the first person, nor the only person, asking themselves how to manage the collective despair, fear, outrage, dare I say it, hatred that is bubbling up on the increasing heat for the next three days. And perhaps, beyond. 

Here's how I plan to do it.  

With a little help from the OED. 

imagination

NOUN

1.     The faculty or action of forming new ideas, or images or concepts of external objects not present to the senses.

1.1 The ability of the mind to be creative or resourceful.

1.2 The part of the mind that imagines things. 

Origin: Middle English via Old French from Latin imaginatio(n-), from the verb imaginari ‘picture to oneself’, from imago. 

Simply put, I’m going to take Imagination Breaks, a deliberate turning away from the 24-hour news cycle, to imagine the country and the world of my best dreams. 

If I do this, I will break the hold of the news cycle and the collective consciousness over my own cycles and my own consciousness. A tiny, one-woman resistance movement against the times and tides in which we live. 

Except, I’m not going to do it in resistance.  

I’m going to do it in gratitude and as a service to all beings of every kind. 

I’m planning to spend significant amounts of time working on a beautiful jigsaw puzzle—which, if you will recall, is my preferred tool for meditation and prayer—and praying for the United States and the best country I can imagine. Also, for the world and the best universe I can imagine. 

Imagination is my salvation, and it could be yours, too. If you’ll let it be. 

For the next three, or however many days it takes to get an answer as to who will be U.S. President 46, won’t you join me in taking Imagination Breaks? 

It doesn’t matter if they’re a minute long or an hour long, or days long. What matters is that we deliberately, consciously, willingly change the subject to contemplate change in our world, a much-needed change in the status quo, according to my way of thinking. 

Change is the factual common denominator of human experience, Beloved. We all know this. We all, at some level, want change. But … we want the changes we want, and they don’t always match the changes that others want.  

In this case, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that Imagination Breaks invite change and the more of us who take them, the more change there will be. It’s as simple and as complicated as that. 

The wisdom of Margaret Mead applies here, ““Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” 

I can’t resist adding … of all the things that imago-, the word at the core of imagination, could be modifying, it has not escaped me that the coiner chose the word nation.  

It’s not proper etymology, I know, but so? Let us take these days of tension and strife, Beloved, to image a new nation.  

Perhaps one conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all of us are at long last  created equal. 

Oh, and, if you haven’t already, please VOTE. 

Dr. Susan Corso is a spiritual teacher, the founder of iAmpersand, and the author of The Mex Mysteries, the Boots & Boas Books, and spiritual nonfiction. Her website is susancorso.com.