Truth Exists in Many Forms of Thought, including imagination*

Georgia NeSmith
4 min readApr 21, 2020
“Impatiens on my Porch,” photo painting by Georgia NeSmith, 2009. Rochester, NY.

This is something I knew even as a child, as I relied upon my imagination to protect me from a world that could otherwise have destroyed me. For me, only one thing was certain: I could not survive without my imagination to take me away from that which terrified me.

My sense of the world has always been open to the uncertainty necessary for creativity. In fact, I’m in love with it. I love not knowing what words, what thoughts, what extraordinary creatures will come to me as I write creatively. It’s fun. It’s interesting. It’s never boring.

And ironically, sometimes uncertainty can actually provide certainty…at least as much certainty as one requires to survive in a chaotic world.

Indeed, the imagination can be the most reliable source of deeper truths than science. Science cannot speak to moral choices. Science cannot speak truths to fear, grief, loss, nor even love. Only the imagination can reach into those depths.

Of course, that imagination must be tempered by reason and science, else it becomes the means by which evil, destructive ideas and the people who promote them may take control…

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Georgia NeSmith

Retired professor, feminist, writer, photographer, activist, grandmother of 5, overall Wise Woman. Phd UIA School of Journalism & Mass Communication, 1994.