Imagination – Dave Glardon

Tomorrow is Here – Get Busy!

March 10, 2023 by Dave Glardon, posted in Uncategorized

Good morning, and happy Friday! I hope your day is off to a great start.

So, there was an segment on the news last night about an asteroid that may or may not crash into the earth sometime in the year 2046. You know, in case you had plans for 2047. Okay, there’s about an 8 percent chance we’ll be in its path. Seems to me we could just step on the gas and get out of the way or blast it toward Pluto. Nobody liked that one anyway.

I would like to think I’ll be around to see what really happens. I would be 88 by then, so I’m not placing any bets. But I think we all tend to live our lives as if tomorrow is pretty much in the bag, even if “tomorrow’ is 8,400 days away. People ask all the time if you knew today would be your last day, what would you do differently? Well, sorry folks. I can’t say that out loud. But you can bet it would be fun!

We were asked that question in a class one time. I remember saying I’d go skydiving. My wife even offered to pack the parachute. This is the same woman who once gave me a gift certificate to the office of Dr. Jack Kevorkian, and I don’t know if she’s ever seen a parachute up close. Let’s just say she wasn’t a fan of my mid-life adjustment.

It amazes me sometimes how we put our complete faith in people we’ve never met, from airline pilots to investment brokers, or even astrologists. Yes, that’s the word I meant to use. I don’t argue with astrophysicists. They’re good at math.

The point to all this is, none of us knows for sure what tomorrow will bring. Sure, it may bring illness or heartache. But odds are, it’ll be another fairly routine day in a fairly routine life. If we want it to be anything more than that, today is the day to set the wheels in motion. From the driver’s seat, thank you. This is not the time to sit back and enjoy the ride.

Weekends are a great time for rest and reflection. Okay, they’re a great time to catch up on all the stuff you didn’t get done during the week. But they’re also the perfect time to sit back, have a drink, and focus on our dreams. You may or may not come up with a perfect plan for achieving those dreams. But nothing happens unless we try.

No, tomorrow is not guaranteed. But if tomorrow comes, wouldn’t it be nice to spend it doing something you love? You can. We all can. It just takes a little imagination and commitment. The rest is easy.

That’s all for now. Have an awesome day!

How Big Is Your Dream?

March 1, 2021March 1, 2021 by Dave Glardon, posted in Uncategorized

Good morning! I hope your day is off to a great start.

Ask any young child what they want to be when they grow up, and I can guarantee not a one of them says, “I want to work at Walmart!” And if you work at Walmart, keep reading because I’m just making a point. As kids, we have grand visions of how our life will be – much better than anything our parents ever imagined. I wanted to be a surgeon. Ask me how that turned out.

About the time I discovered girls, I noticed they had an affinity for rock stars. My sister had posters of every Teen Beat idol plastered all over her bedroom walls. Okay, none of them were technically “rock stars,” but at the age of 12, I could definitely see the potential. So, I learned to play a guitar and launched a lifetime career in musical stardom. You know how that turned out.

I’m willing to bet if you ask anybody you know what they wanted to be when they were five or ten, it’s nothing remotely close to what they’re actually doing today. And I’m willing to bet every one of our parents said the same thing. “You can do anything you want, sweetheart! Yes, you can!” Until the day they told us to get our head out of the clouds and find a real job.

If you ever wonder what happened to our ability to dream, there it is. As kids, we can imagine anything. I’ve been learning a song on the guitar that perfectly captures that imagination – Puff the Magic Dragon. Yes, I’m really that old. But the lyrics are a bit troubling, because halfway through the song, little Jackie loses his imagination and Puff is left all alone. He just grew up.

So, what is it about growing up that takes such a toll on our imagination? I think part of it is just the world around us. Let’s face it, others don’t always find value in our dreams of a better life. That’s especially true on the job. It’s okay to work hard and try to advance. Just don’t get too big for your britches! You still need this job. You always will. That’s part of the master plan.

And you can’t blame them. It’s like a father training his son how to run the farm, only to watch him run away and join the circus. Sure, the kid may be happy and living his own dream. But dad is left to find somebody else he can train in half the time. And preferably someone who will buy his own food for the next 18 years.

And even if nobody steps on our dreams, life happens. Bills come due, promotions go to the other person, and we find ourselves working two jobs just to make ends meet. It’s hard to even remember our dreams at that point, much less put any energy into them. And that’s when we need our dreams the most.

Albert Einstein once said that your imagination is a preview of what’s to come. Napoleon Hill took it a step further and said if you don’t see riches in your imagination, you’ll never see them in your bank account. Now, maybe that sounds a little too simplistic, but both of those men accomplished a lot. Is it possible they’re really on to something?

I was listening to a motivational speaker who said we’ll never leave where we are until we see ourselves where we want to be. Now, whether you believe in any of this or not, can we at least agree that it all begins with a dream? If we want something better, enough to work for it, we have to believe deep down that we can actually achieve it. Otherwise, it’s just work.

Believing we can achieve begins with seeing success before it ever happens. Experience success first, even if only in your imagination, and it becomes that much easier to attain. Do you have a dream book? Someplace where you not only list your dreams, but put in pictures to make them more real? Photoshop yourself into those pictures if you have to. You’re not breaking any laws.

And here’s the most important part – if you’re going to use your imagination, think big! It takes the same amount of energy to dream of a used car as a new one. And, oddly enough, it takes the same amount of effort on a daily basis to achieve it. One just takes a little longer. If you can do the work for a small dream, you can certainly do it for a big one.

When you already know how the story ends, getting there is that much easier. Focus on the destination, and the path will present itself. The road may not look like you’d imagined, but if you keep pressing, that road becomes a success story … yours. Make it a story worth telling.

That’s all for now. Have an awesome day!

Follow @dglardon

Imagination – The Solution To Every Challenge

April 17, 2020April 17, 2020 by Dave Glardon, posted in Uncategorized

Good morning, and happy Friday! I hope your day is off to a great start.

This week seems like it’s been something other than a week. I can’t say if it felt longer, shorter, muddier, or colder, but it was definitely different. Okay, it was colder. I’m sure of that. Here we are in mid-April, with freezing temperatures overnight most of the week. And the RV is sitting there with water in the pipes. Because, you know, April. Who would’ve known?

And believe me, yesterday was one of those days when I really wanted to send the kids outside to burn off some of that excess energy. With the little ones, it usually happens around 5:00, right before their dad comes to pick them up. It’s payback for all the hours they were good, not to mention an afternoon nap. I’d ban naps, but I’ve seen how that story ends. No thanks.

It’s hard, because they don’t have much to play with here. Their bicycles are at home, and we don’t have a swing set. Okay, with these kids, it’s more like a jungle gym. Deep jungle. We can’t just turn them loose out front because they’d end up in the street, and the back yard is more of an obstacle course, courtesy of the dog. But at least they’d have something to play with.

Kids can amuse themselves with the simplest things. And just in case anybody thinks that trait vanishes in the teenage years, I beg to differ. I was in the Boy Scouts, and when you put a group of adolescent boys on an open prairie that doubles as a cattle ranch, dodgeball takes on a whole new meaning. Let’s just say there’s plenty of ammo to keep everybody amused.

But you know, there’s nothing wrong with kids finding new and improved ways to have fun with things we’d normally step over. It’s a sign of imagination, though sometimes a bit twisted. Still, it’s hard to shut them down when they’re so overly amused. Okay, you make them scrub their hands and toss their clothes directly in the washer. But otherwise, what’s the real harm?

Well, I guess that depends on who’s throwing and who’s catching. I was always on the receiving end. Whether it was a bucket of water, a mud bomb, or the dreaded cow pie, I spent a good part of my youth on the run. I guess that’s why I don’t run today. Unless somebody is chasing me with a snake, that is. No, that’s not a hypothetical statement. Been there.

But you know, it’s the same imagination that can look at cattle dung and see a Frisbee that found penicillin in moldy bread or looked at an egg and saw food. Think about it. At some point in time, a farmer left a bucket of milk in the barn overnight and came back to a glob of churning bacteria. “Hmmm. Strain that through a sock and I bet it’d taste GREAT on a hamburger!”

I’m no biblical expert, but I’m pretty sure the Garden of Eden didn’t come with a full kitchen, indoor plumbing, and an entire set of Craftsman tools. All of the modern conveniences we enjoy came as the result of human ingenuity. And ingenuity is the spawn of imagination. It began the first time a caveman dropped a heavy rock and watched it roll. I never said it was all intentional.

In fact, a lot of things happen by accident. Styrofoam was the result of an industrial accident. According to an old TV commercial, two people were walking down the street eating peanut butter and chocolate and bumped into one another. And way back in 1847, somebody mixed the right combination of glycerol and nitric acid and said, “Here, shake this up.”

Any one of those things could have resulted in nothing more than filling up the trash can with something we have dozens of uses for today. Okay, that last one would have blown up the trash can, but you get the idea. Imagination is to see something not as it is, but as it could be. It’s the ability to find new uses for useless items and turn disaster into opportunity.

Watch a young child, barely able to sit on their own, and you’ll see the wheels turning. Watch a young child, barely able to sit on their own, and you’ll see the wheels turning. Anything they can find becomes an implement to achieve a goal. That goal may simply be to reach a ball that’s just beyond their reach. It doesn’t have to be anything grand. But those little minds can find a solution to just about any challenge. Which is why nothing is ever completely out of their reach..

We don’t lose that imagination with age. We shut it down. We allow what we’ve learned to become our reality instead of forgetting enough of what we’ve learned to alter that reality. Every obstacle presents new solutions. Every tool has a new use. And every challenge presents opportunity. If what’s in front of you isn’t working, sometimes all you have to do is look beyond.

That’s all for now. Have an awesome day!

Follow @dglardon