Human consciousness is really just a sophisticated form of the pattern recognition that prehistoric monkeys used in the wild to discern which mushrooms were poisonous.

The only reason we humans have any awareness of causality at all is because our furry, primate forefathers needed to know that some mushrooms tasted delicious if you put them them in your little monkey mouth, and others made your little monkey stomach all rumbly and your little monkey poops super unpleasant.

That’s it.

But somehow our species got lucky enough to live so long that our once-necessary-for-survival mushroom analysis software upgraded into this weird, complex thing called “imagination”.

Now, we don’t just see cause and effect when it’s relative to the integrity of our bowel movements—we also see patterns that aren’t EVEN THERE: We hear thunder and we sense the presence of hammer-wielding Viking Gods, we fabricate weird relationships between the length of Summer and the bravery displayed by a groundhog when it’s confronted by its own shadow.

We take pain, and chaos, and confusion and we turn that into purpose. And we call this talent “imagination”.

Human beings, as a species, are unique—and not just because of our AWESOME thumbs, but because we are the only animals who are capable of seeing a better world where one doesn’t exist

…yet.

As all of you know, I am a freelancer. That means that I only get to sustain myself for as long as I can keep my imagination running to the satisfaction of my clients.

Right now the coffers are running low. Things are lookin’ hairy.

But I refuse to believe that I was put on this Earth in order to get evicted and starve. I look at everything I’ve been through, everything I’ve done, and I choose—like a child finding shapes in the clouds—to imagine a more grand design.

I imagine that I am capable of accomplishing much more than the math of who I am says I should be able to. I imagine a world where the ideas that I have about hope, faith, love and justice are worth $2.99. I imagine that I can write our story a better ending than the one we’ve been sold.

It could be that I’m “just imaginging things”–but that’s worked out pretty okay for me (and our species at large) thus far…