Imagination allows you to bend the rules of the temporal world.

The Timeless Power of Imagination

Hear, O child of earth and dream, the words of the painter Amy Sherald, who said: “Imagination allows you to bend the rules of the temporal world.” These are not idle words, but the revelation of one who sees beyond the veil of time. For the temporal world, bound by hours and decay, obeys the laws of matter and mortality — yet the imagination bows to no such master. It walks freely between what is and what might be, shaping eternity with every vision. Where the body is trapped in the present, the mind, through imagination, learns to fly.

In this saying lies the recognition of humankind’s oldest power — the gift to transcend. The temporal world holds men and women in chains: they age, they suffer, they die. But the imagination defies these limits. It bends the rules of time and flesh, allowing us to see the unborn future and resurrect what was lost. It paints what the eyes cannot yet behold. Through imagination, the artist stands beside the eternal, fashioning worlds of beauty and truth that endure long after the body fades. The poet, the dreamer, the builder — all are disciples of this sacred rebellion against time.

When Sherald speaks of bending the rules, she speaks as one who has done so. Her portraits — serene, proud, radiant — defy the narrow perceptions of race, gender, and history. In her work, she reshapes how the world sees Black identity, lifting it from the confines of stereotype into the realm of timeless humanity. Her imagination breaks the laws of the visible, bending reality to reveal a deeper truth. The temporal world says, “This is how things are,” but imagination replies, “This is how they could be.” Thus, every act of imagination is an act of liberation.

The ancients, too, understood this mystery. When Plato spoke of the realm of forms, he described a world beyond time — a place where beauty and justice existed in their purest state. The philosopher could glimpse that world only through imagination, for the senses could not reach it. And so it is with us: imagination is the ladder that lets the soul climb beyond the walls of the physical world. It is the power by which prophets foresee, inventors create, and artists give shape to the invisible. Those who wield it walk between realities.

Consider the story of Nikola Tesla, the seer of lightning. Long before his inventions were born, he saw them complete in his mind — not sketches, but living machines. He bent the rules of the temporal world by imagining what had never existed. While others built through trial and error, Tesla worked through vision, designing entire systems within the cathedral of his mind. To him, the imagination was not fantasy, but reality unbound by time. And through that vision, he brought the world into a new age of light.

But beware, O listener, for imagination is both gift and responsibility. To bend the rules of time is not to escape it, but to understand it more deeply. The imagination does not destroy reality; it reveals its hidden structure. Those who use it without wisdom risk losing themselves in illusion. Therefore, Sherald’s teaching reminds us that imagination must serve truth, not ego; creation, not chaos. The artist, like the sage, must balance vision with discipline — to dream greatly, yet act with purpose.

And what lesson shall we take from these words? That imagination is not a toy of the mind, but the bridge between worlds. Through it, we rise above the narrow confines of circumstance. It allows the prisoner to envision freedom, the weary to dream of peace, and the ordinary soul to touch the eternal. Every invention, every revolution, every work of art began as defiance of time — as someone daring to see beyond the moment. So, cultivate your imagination as a sacred practice. Feed it with stories, silence, and wonder. For each time you dream, you bend the rules of the temporal world — and in doing so, you remind yourself that you were never meant to be bound by them.

Thus, remember Amy Sherald’s wisdom: the imagination is not a shadow of reality, but its highest form. When you dream, when you create, when you dare to believe in what cannot yet be seen — you are performing the oldest and most divine of human acts. You are bending time itself.