Life & Wisdom Quote by Vernon Howard

Vernon Howard’s line lands like a gentle insult: the problem isn’t the world’s complexity, it’s our insistence on running it through the cheap projector of imagination. The phrasing sets up a clean duel between “really are” and “imagine,” and the implicit verdict is harsh. Imagination here isn’t creativity; it’s self-deception dressed up as personal truth. Howard’s intent is corrective, almost disciplinary: stop trusting the comforting story your mind improvises, and start training perception like a muscle.

What makes it work is the quiet shift from individual to collective. He doesn’t say “as you imagine,” but “as we imagine,” drafting the reader into a shared human weakness. That “we” softens the blow while widening the target: ego, bias, wishful thinking, resentment, nostalgia. It’s a compact description of how people build inner narratives to protect identity, then mistake those narratives for reality.

Context matters because Howard’s work sits in the self-help/spiritual-inquiry lane where “awakening” is less incense and more interruption. The quote is a directive for psychological hygiene: notice what you’re adding, what you’re assuming, what you’re editing out. It’s also a warning about emotional addiction. If you’re hooked on being right, being wronged, being special, your imagination becomes a courtroom stenographer, not a lens.

The subtext is uncomfortable: clarity costs. To see “things as they really are” means surrendering the pleasures of projection and the drama of interpretation. Howard is selling a tougher freedom - not the freedom to feel whatever, but the freedom from the stories that keep you stuck.