Imagination inspires us. What could be, grows into vision. Vision draws us, taunts us, challenges us to stretch beyond our ability. We go to super-human extremes to realize dreams based on nothing more solid than an idea, hunch, or wish.

On the other hand, our concepts of real, but unvisited, places often remain vague. They lack solidity, vibrance, and complexity almost as if they don’t exist at all. We try to imagine what we’ve never seen but reality usually surprises us.

Take NASA’s New Horizon space probe for example. Clyde Tombaugh finally found Pluto in 1930 after an exhaustive search. Since then many wondered what the faraway planet might look like, might be made of. In the intervening years, most of us settled with the hazy picture of yet another cratered but otherwise unremarkable rock moving along its lonely path around the solar system.

I first wrote how that mission challenged us to think like new creatures (see A Different Kind of Life). This week I’m thinking about some of our default assumptions:

• Every other place is like “here.”
• What we see is all there is.
• We have the all-encompassing view.
• That this life is all about us.

Check out this Astrum YouTube video (13:43 after skipping the ads) of what the New Horizons probe discovered around Pluto. It confirms the truth that we see only the very tiniest slivers of our universe.

Fortunately, the creator has that all under control and takes our limitations into account when dealing with us.