Page 149 - Writes of Passage
P. 149
from DADDY-LONG-LEGS
The most necessary quality for any person to have is imagination. It makes people able to put themselves in other people’s places. It makes them kind and sympathetic and understanding. It ought to be cultivated in children.
Jean Webster
This comes from a novel from 1912 for young adults, Daddy-Long-Legs, written by Jean Webster.
Young people are naturally more imaginative than most adults. Children’s play involves so much make-believe. But as we get older we may stop exercising our imagination, and then it weakens. Keep making up stories – either writing them down, or in your head. You can practise by watching strangers and imagining what their lives are like, or listening to other people and visualising what they
tell you about. Or read stories – true or fictional – and conjure in your mind the scenes they describe, and guess what will happen next. I used to write stories a lot as a child, and then I started to write essays instead. I wish I had done more to keep training my imagination.
But it’s not too late for you.
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