“In some respects, I’m 14 1/2 years old. In others, I’m an old man, growing into wisdom about the world, asking questions about why we are here. Imagination – that’s my religion. Without imagination you have no art, no music, no literature, no religion. You can’t throw one out without throwing them all out.”

- Sting

It’s easy to forget how astonishing it is.

Maybe we escape the drum beat of the world to remember that there’s a different vision of how this turns out. Or maybe we bring the world in with us and try to sort out new ways of seeing, sharing, collaborating and being.

Our ability to tell stories encompasses ever-widening domains. The tools with which we can create are becoming increasingly rich, expressive, and meaningful.

“To allow creativity its appropriate place in our lives and our culture, our education and our family relationships, is to allow healing to happen on a profound level.”

- Matthew Fox

We fall in love in virtual worlds. We find our shadow selves that appear less ‘real’ and yet are more finely articulated than in reality, more subtle. This is the great romantic notion: public myths awaiting our private dreams, all of it made visible.

And maybe we bring back with us the realization of how pale the world is, see the shadows on the cave wall. There’s a place where we can speak with our true voices, unencumbered. We discover that there are darker demons and higher angels both.

Our journeys are personal ones first. With courage, maybe we take those lessons out into that wider world, the strange loop between what we find in worlds being what we are in ourselves, and what we are in our selves in the world as well.

We see prims in the buildings around us, but we see our finer and baser natures as well.

“I dream of a new age of curiosity. We have the technical means for it; the desire is there; the things to be known are infinite; the people who employ themselves at this task exist. Why do we suffer? From too little; from channels that are too narrow, skimpy, quasi-monopolistic, insufficient. There is no point in adopting a protectionist attitude, to prevent “bad” from invading the “good”. Rather we must multiply the paths and the possibilities of comings and goings.”

- Michel Foucault

We have all become teachers and students. These worlds let us see that we must be both. They show us that we can both construct and deconstruct our wisdom, an endless cycle of creative tearing down and building up.

We’re finding new ways of learning. We’re collaborating on new ways to lift each other up into the future.

That little spot we made where we hold classes underwater is a reminder of what McLuhan said, that “Tomorrow is our permanent address.”

“Makers shape things into being, granting them their intrinsic identity. Still in a corner of their workshops and yet drifting with the currents of the rest of humanity, makers reflect back the world in its constant ruptures and changes, and mirror themselves in the unstable shapes of our societies, becoming what the Nicaraguan poet Ruben Dario called “celestial lightning rods” by asking over and over again “Who are we?” and by offering the ghosts of an answer in the words of the question itself.”

- Alberto Manguel

It’s easy to forget how astonishing it is, this you which is creator.