Books, stories, worlds

I am a dreamer. 
Daydreaming and what-if-questions are my top favorite procrastination activities. And thanks to modern neuroscience research, it is now considered a positive trait. So let’s daydream a little bit more, how imaginative worlds are made in my mind.

There are 3 main reasons I recognize as crucial, why I am so attached to imagination:
– Musical Education
– Generation Gap within my close family circle
– Books

Music

Being a musician / violin player / part of an orchestra is a perfect training ground for an imaginative brain. If you want to perform well, you need to practice a lot. As you have learned musical theory and understood concepts of techniques, you are ready to rock. Although that’s not always the case.
Reading black notes on a white paper score and transforming them into music via very precise movements of your body needs a great amount of imagination. Additionally in an orchestra, you want to be in exact synchronization with others. Not just in a rhythm with less than a millisecond difference, but with emotional expressions too.
As seen in this TEDed video, literally fireworks of imagination are happening.

Family

When I was that golden hair “violin prodigy” child, I developed a nice habit of listening. I mean not just to music, but to others as well. 
I hadn’t a chance to do anything else, as I had four parents. Well, not really, but the age difference between me and my siblings is 9 and 14 years, so I call them such names when it is beneficial for me. There were usually “debates of the elders” in the kitchen, where my parents and siblings were solving everyday issues or global geopolitical questions. I understood nothing, but I was listening with my mouth opened (and with a lory truck eaten :))

BOOKS

It came slowly to me, but then it hit me hard.
I was definitely not a bookworm. Maybe I just needed some cage and umbrella, which could grab my fragmented imagination and cover my ideas from the omnipresent ideas. Books on different topics were usually just given to me, either by my parents or my friends. That was not helping my focus, but my imagination went crazy.
I was oscillating around macroeconomics (you know, ideals of a university student) and geopolitical issues (we bring so much burden from our childhood). But that was not the books, I was exposed to (maybe just Arthur Hailey’s series was close to such kind).
Only when I got my first job and I began to buy my own books, I became the master of my world. That’s what I at least thought.

How books shape and contain my world

Nowadays, I see the five most influential books in my life. They helped me to comb my imagination and they gave a framework to my thinking. They clarify my understanding of the net of relationships, our world is made of and produce as well. Both on macro and micro levels.
And none of them were deliberately chosen by myself again. What brings me to a question → who or what shapes my worldview? Is it some weird mix of environment and chance? Where is my free will?! 🙂

Timeline of the influence

2015
– The fourth turning (William Strauss, Neil Howe)
– This book was one of the research sources for my university project on “Generational change on a marketplace”

2017
– Economical, Political and Social Issues (Milan Zelený)
– Given to me on a conference in Czech Republic “New ways of Entrepreneurship”

2018
– The secret life of the mind (Mariano Sigman)
– Recommended in a TED talk about connection between words and mental health

2018
– Thinking, fast and slow (Daniel Kahneman)
– Recommended by my Russian language lecturer

2019
– Prisoners of Geography (Tim Marshal)
– Recommended by my English friend

Books about Micro and Macro world