April 30 - On Imagination

Imagination is more important than knowledge, for knowledge is limited while imagination embraces the entire world.
Albert Einstein

Our imagination is the only limit to what we can hope to have in the future.
Charles F. Kettering

Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will.
George Bernard Shaw

April 29

Something new I want to do. I may not be able to get to it daily, but I'm going to try. Hopefully no one will think I'm doing this to increase my pageviews, because those don't really matter that much to me. I am inspired to do it by a story I heard this week.

A corporate consultant visited a grocery store in order to help increase the store's sales. She suggested to the store's employees that they try somehow to make the customer's visits to the store a memorable one, in a good way. One of the baggers, a boy with Down's Syndrome named Johnny, decided that he would slip a little something into one of the bags of each of the customers. He called it his "Thought for the Day". He got the help of his father, who typed the thoughts out on the computer and made copies of them. They included quotes, stories, and when he couldn't come up with anything, just thoughts from the boy himself.

It made a very positive impact on the store, which filtered through to the other employees. So much so, that whatever register Johnny happened to be at that day had a much longer line than any other. Customers often would not move even if offered a shorter line because they wanted that little slip of paper with the thought for the day.

I was so inspired by that story, I decided I wanted to be a "Johnny" to my own circle of friends.