Did you know that people who suffer from hippocampal amnesia can’t imagine future events with any richness of detail or emotions?

It’s believed that the same neurological mechanism that allows people to recall old experiences is necessary for the conception of novel, hypothetical ones. This is because imagination is just your brain remixing elements of your memories into novel constructions, and the mere assumption of how any future event might be is actually an act of creativity.

So every flutter of excitement for a first date that’s yet to arrive, every bead of sweat dripped over a speech that’s yet to be delivered, every ounce of validation from a marathon yet to be run, every sublime sigh exhaled over a palatial vista on a vacation yet to be booked—and all the other infinite advertising tropes of ultimate consumer satisfaction—is just a collage of fragmented memories. The process of deciding which road to travel based on where you imagine it might lead, the very act of choosing how to live your life, is an act of creativity.

We were all born to be creative. To tell anyone otherwise is to deny their ability to write the story of their own existence.

Some of us just managed to convince people to pay us to do it.