Step into your Vision
“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” ― Howard Thurman
I’ve always loved this quote from Howard Thurman. Part of seeing clearly is noticing what makes you come alive, what resonates, what touches you. These are all clues to discovering your vision, where you’re needed and can make a difference. In this post, we’ll explore what it means to have a vision and how we are all visionaries in our own way.
In her book, Sight and Sensibility, Laura Sewall’s one of the final chapters is called Visionary Practice. According to Sewall, a visionary is “one who sees well, with clarity, precision, and imagination. They see the world as it is in this moment, freed of projection or personal agenda, and yet also illuminated and embellished with the cultivated capacity of their imagination… They’re engaged with the world, on the lookout for signs, for patterns. They see what is possible within their immediate view.”
Each of us operates from a particular area of expertise or, most importantly, in what we care about most. What you see - your vision - is unique to you. This may sound rather lofty, even overwhelming. Maybe you’re thinking that you’re not really a visionary. Or, that you’ve worked hard your whole life and it’s time to leave the visionary work to someone else. I get it.
Of course we can’t solve the problems of the world by ourselves. However, everyone can be a visionary at the micro, everyday level. If we see clearly where we are and what is needed, then we can use our imagination and agency to act in response. We’ll be looking at both of these aspects of vision in the next couple of weeks.
But first, who is a visionary for you?
Each of us has different role models that we consider to be visionaries. For me, writers like Rebecca Solnit and photographers like Teju Cole, who write truth to power and envision a more just world. In my local community, I think of a woman who makes migrant workers feel a sense of belonging, and winemakers who operate biodynamically, in cooperation with the land. In my family, I consider my activist niece, who works tirelessly for climate justice.
I believe that the qualities of the people we admire hold clues to qualities that are present in us. I’m not going to shape the future in the same way as the people I admire, but I can use the qualities they and I possess to create my own work in the world. My motto for my work and my life is that the meaning of life is to see. And, all of my writing and photography stems from that vision.
A visionary sees what others don’t. We need people from all walks of life who envision new ways of seeing and being – on local and global levels, and in our relationships with each other and the earth. The world needs your vision.
Practice
Cultivating your visionary capacity takes practice. It takes knowing what you care about and deciding how you want to contribute.
Identify people in the world and in your close community who are visionaries for you. Name five qualities you admire for each of them. What are the most common qualities that show up in this exercise? How are these qualities present in you? Shout out to Danielle Laporte, who first introduced me to this idea many years ago,
Read: Longings and Callings. Make a list of your own longings and callings.
You live your vision one step at a time. When I took the Playing Big course years ago, we did a visual meditation exercise, where we imagined our lives 20 years in the future. Then, we were to pick a few simple ways we could step into that future today. It’s a powerful exercise and I like that it focuses on you, not what others need to do to make your vision happen. For example, if you want to see more kindness in the world, practice being more kind today. How will you step into your vision today?