Читать книгу Hope’s Daughters - R. Wayne Willis - Страница 64

Two men in a hospital for the incurably ill shared a room. The man in the bed next to the window sat in a chair each afternoon for one hour to keep fluid from building in his lungs. The other man, whose spinal column was fused, had to spend all day flat on his back.

During the hour each day he was sitting up, the man next to the window shared with his roommate the interesting things he saw going on outside. There was a park out there and in the middle of the park a small lake where swans swam, parents and their children sailed toy boats, and visitors fed ducks. From day to day he would paint in vivid detail scenes of teenagers throwing a Frisbee, lovers walking arm in arm, or children flying multicolored kites. The patient in the other bed would just close his eyes and enjoy imagining those scenes in his mind.

One night the man next to the window died. As soon as it seemed appropriate, the other man asked the nurse if he could be switched over to the bed by the window. She moved him, and soon after she left the room he managed to raise himself on one elbow high enough to peek over the window sill and get his first look at the park. What he was startled to see was a blank wall.

That afternoon he learned from the nurse that the man who had described such wonderful things outside was blind and could not see even the wall. She suggested: “Perhaps he was just trying to help you not get too discouraged.”55

Logic without imagination can be cold and sterile. Take it from a genius named Einstein: “Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.”