Vision Over Visibility

For better or worse, we live in a monetary, material, concrete world.  Cash and carry, no C.O.D.s, thank you.  And so most of us plug away, doing the best we can to survive -- some of us even thrive.  But the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.

It's hard to be a visionary if you don't have a vision.  But there are so very few true visionaries because what we can see and feel and taste and touch has presedence in our lives, and usually for very good reasons.  Mortgage payments, bills, insurance, working toward retirement, these are strong motivations that keep us stuck in what can feel like an endless treadmill.

A vision?  For all but a very few, that's a recipe for disaster.  Sure, geniuses see life in completely different ways... but what usually ends up happening to them?  Martyrs, paupers, crazies, heretics, losers most.  And then the other ones who create the art that we hang in museums, the novels we read in college, the innovators who start companies like Microsoft and Google, poets, prophets, investors, rebels.  All of them share a touch of the Mad Hatter, a belief in what they think and believe, even when it contradicts the herd.

Play it safe or go for broke?  Trust your instincts, or what has worked more often than not in the past?  See what's out there or stay at home where it's snug, safe and familiar?

We all get to make these decisions for ourselves.  The sad part is, nobody tells us the stakes involved until it's too late. 

Schools could provide the missing link, cultivating our individual talents, nurturing our latent abilities, encouraging us to become what we are capable of instead of what fits into the already established, neatly fitting grid.

At some point or other, most of us will want to discover what we were born for, what it is we might have been doing all along.  No matter where you are on the journey of life, there will be people who tell you there's no point in trying, that you'll only end up in disaster.  That the common way is the best way because most of the risks have been sqeezed out.

But if that vision remains locked away in your deepest soul, you will need to bring it out at some point while you still can.  It may be crazy; you may be a Noah out in his yard building an ark while the neighbors write you off as a looney.  The real question is: can you sleep at night if you don't get out there and start hammering?  Are you willing to face God after having doubted Him and the special mission He gave you while you were on this earth?

Then again, what do I know?  I'm just a guy who is fed up with placing my dreams on hold, in doubting the strong sense of mission that I feel inside. 

I have tried the safe routes and failed at every one.  Is it really such a risk now to do what I probably should have been working on all along?

Maybe this will all go smash.  But I'm putting myself out there and saying, okay, then, fine.  All the naysayers will be proven correct if that's the case.  I will have lost the bet.  All my deepest wishes for my life will have come to naught.

And yet, how different is that than if I never ventured them at all?  If they stayed locked in my heart where nobody could ever know about them?  Sure, I would have all these perfect fantasies stored away for a future "someday."  But that's like a child putting away his unopened Christmas presents so he can take them out 40 years later and sell them on ebay.  (And I know some of you are saying, smart kid!)

We all get to make those choices -- and I'm rolling up my sleeves and making mine.  My dreams will stay stored away no longer.  Failure is less a risk than dying with so much unlived life locked safely inside my heart.