Defining vision

According to the handy Apple dictionary, vision is defined as "the faculty or state of being able to see."  The second definition, more applicable to my current circumstances is, "the ability to think about or plan the future with imagination or wisdom."  The last description moves into the realm of supernatural apparitions. 

My comfort with visions follows precisely the hierarchy of definitions.  I am a visual person.  I like to look around, to observe the things going on in the world.  My photography is about capturing a moment and attempting to draw out it's beauty.  I rarely pose a shot, I never do studio work.  Everything you see on this blog is a snippet of some experience that I was having.  My pictures are of things that I notice.  I wasn't always interested in looking around.  I was the victim of a violent crime.  For a long time after that experience, everything scared me.  I couldn't make eye contact, I'd be totally overwhelmed walking into a new environment.  Every thing, every person was a threat.  It took a lot of practice, small and slow steps to overcome the paranoia of victimhood.  There was a time when I did not think I would ever see anything but danger.  Now I understand that the way I see is informed by the redemption of trauma, it is the result of reigning in  what was once a dangerous case of hypervigilance. In the refinement of neurosis, I have new eyes for everyday beauty.  I see more than I ever did before.

Vision as the ability to think and plan with wisdom and imagination seems to be the next big challenge.  The tension that grips my whole body when I think about having a vision for my life is totally debilitating.  I am overcome with a single thought - "I DON'T KNOW."  I find the question threatening and the questioner a sadistic tormentor.  Ask me anything, anything except that.  I am of sound enough mind to recognize how irrational my fear is.  I even have an image that captures the insanity of it.  There I am clinging to the top of a flag pole, crawling 20 feet in the air to get away from the relentless need for a vision.  Me, terrified of heights as I am, holding onto this cold, slippery silver pole, hoping I won't fall.  Every time I look down, I see crowds of people whispering about my lack of vision.  "Yeah. She's the girl who has no vision," says one woman in a stinging whisper.  "If she only had a vision, she might get back to doing something with her life, she's become such a lazy cow" replies the woman standing next to her.  "Well,"  her friend responds conspiratorially, "I hear she's just impossible to be around. Doesn't play well with others, if you know what I mean. Nothing special enough about that one to put up with the personality.  And, you know the things they said about her and the former boss."  A third person joins the conversation. "Do you really think she slept her way to that job?"  The first woman raises her eyebrows. " Maybe she isn't that bright.  After all, she is perched at the top of a flagpole and no one knows why."  They all laugh.  "Everyone knew she would break eventually."  There are other voices at the bottom of the flagpole.  Kind and generous, encouraging voices.  I'm starting to hear those more clearly.  The volume is turned down on the din of criticism and doubt.  But I'm still terrified, I know there's a crowd of people out there, everywhere, ready to shred the vision.  Ready to mock and gawk and say she's kidding herself.  With that kind of imagination, it's not surprising that I don't find immediate joy in crafting something that will expose my deepest desires, my dream for this life.  I want to protect that, it's too fragile to hold up to the world.  I understand the faulty logic here.  I admitted at the outset it was irrational.  The parallels to the time when I was afraid of everything are real.  I knew it was irrational then.  I knew that I wasn't afraid of the person standing in front of me.  I was afraid of the potential that they represented.  I had to rehabilitate my vision. I recall it was hard work. I had to limit the visual field in the beginning.  I had to move more slowly, tenderly taking in the people and the things around me.  I had to give my brain enough time to see something, to understand it and to decode whether or not it was dangerous.  It was an intense time of deliberate intellectual and physical engagement.

  

The path to restoring or perhaps to finding the vision I lack now isn't altogether clear.  I think I'm doing the things I need to do to find my way to a vision and a voice for it.  I think cultivating disciplines of patience, of preparation, of waiting are part of coaxing into the conscious world something that already lives below the surface.  I think I am doing the right things in the right places but I can't be sure.  It is impossible to know if I am just wasting time, indulging insecurity, jeopardizing some unrealized potential.

I long for some reassurance that I am progressing but visions are too big to get bogged down in scorecards and timelines.  Visions change lives.  Real visions are what change the world.  And, so, I end with the third definition - "an experience of seeing someone or something in a dream or a trance, or as a supernatural apparition."  This week is when we celebrate the life of a man who changed the world because he had a dream and the melodic voice to sing it into hearts despite massive, terrifying obstacles.  From Moses to Martin Luther King, Jr, great visions are always inspired by God.  I believe in this God who in the face of the impossible, in the direct confrontation of human fears draws us into an inspired identity.  I may not be comfortable with this God but I do believe in him, that much is clear.