Post 1: Emergent Strategy

“I often feel I am trapped inside someone else’s imagination, and I must engage my own imagination in order to break free” (18)

• Q: Have you felt trapped inside someone else’s imagination? How have you broken free?
• A: I believe if you look at society as a larger system, we are all, at one point or another, trapped inside of someone else’s imagination. There are many ways to approach life, yet many of us have followed a similar set path or societal standards; school, college, work, marriage, and purchasing a home. So much of this “straight and narrow” approach to life was systemized through someone’s thoughts or imagination. In the media and mainstream America, standards of beauty, worthiness, and reward are bestowed upon us through one lens built from a collective imagination of those in the power of the narrative and to be given the designation of tastemakers. Much of this sentiment is outlined in the list of concepts from the reading. As I have gotten older and experienced some fallout from sticking so closely to the binary of  “right” and “wrong,” I took stock of what was important to me, not what was being projected by others and have attempted to approach my life with that compass. At the risk of sounding selfish, the lifestyle shifts from the pandemic provided a silver lining of fully leaning into remote work, the ability to live nomadically, and to apply and partake in this program 13 years after graduating from undergrad.

• Q: What is a negative pattern that you see in a small way that reverberates outward that you could attempt to disrupt today?
• A: This quote particularly resonated with me, “Transform yourself to transform the world.”—Grace Lee Boggs. While it feels like a drop in the bucket, my partner and I have recently started to introduce more plant-based food into our diet and routine to attempt to combat the environmental impacts of the meat/farming industry.