We listened as David Bowie sang about the electric blue room where he would live and saw the colour in our minds. We experience our reality through the gift of our five senses, depending heavily on our vision and hearing. What we rarely account for is in between or beyond our senses: our imagination, the tool with which we can create our reality. I imagine that blue room whenever I hear that song.

This is not to disparage reality – our senses guide us through it very effectively. However, each of us experiences the world differently. We did not come off of assembling lines and all of our parts are not uniform, so there exist little differences between us which affect how we read the world. Still, we seem to agree on the basics of matter and physics so it’s not terribly difficult to communicate.

Yet, what is it that we are communicating to each other? We don’t simply judge the world around us solely on our five senses – we use our imagination to foresee possible consequences and effects, and we play out scenarios in our minds that have not yet become reality. Our imaginations are very powerful tools and we often use them to our detriment by envisioning the worst possible outcomes. What if we didn’t have to do that?

You can’t help looking up into a clear sky and seeing blue, but you don’t have to imagine an airplane falling out of the sky right onto you. The reality of the moment is what it is, but the reality of tomorrow’s moment has not yet been set and is influenced by the moment before it. Our world can be bigger and wider than our senses allow if we go beyond sound and vision and permit the wider reality to reveal itself within our imaginations. It is possible if we look for the variations in hue in the sky or listen for the underlying harmonies to create a whole new world.

Keri lives in Boyle Street.