Guy Raz, NPR Host: Did you think of yourself as a creative person when you were younger?
Sting: I was actually allowed to dream a lot as a child. I worked with my father every morning as a milkman. And he would get me up at five in the morning when all of my school friends are in bed. And we'd drive around the streets and deliver milk. And he wouldn't say very much to me, apart from, you know, two pints here and 3 pints there. We didn't talk. And so I was allowed - in this very creative time in the day, you know, as light was coming up - to dream. And I dreamt and dreamt and dreamt about futures I might possibly have, fantasized I suppose. So, I was in that creative mode from the very beginning, just by being left alone.
The word “imagination” doesn’t get much respect. For many people, it connotes “make-believe,” the province of children and artists. But I believe the imagination is the most important asset we all possess; it’s the power to form mental pictures of things that don’t exist yet. As such, it’s what we use to shape our future. Rob Brezsny