Vision

Awakening Your Potential to Create a Better World

Peter Benson

• Publisher: Templeton Press
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781599473598
• Topic: Desarrollo personal
• Subtopic: Superación personal

According to Peter L. Benson, the capacity to generate vision is among life's most beautiful and unheralded gifts. To him, a vision is more than just a goal, more than just a dream of what could be—it is a summons, a pull towards the future, an inspired call to make real that which should be. In Vision: Awakening Your Potential to Create a Better World, Benson takes readers on an uplifting exploration of this powerful concept.

Starting with examples of great visionary moments in history, such as the drafting of the Declaration of Independence and Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech, he crafts a working definition of "vision" and what it means to be visionary. He proceeds by profiling the personalities behind some of the great visions that have shaped our world, covering a diverse set of individuals ranging from presidents who pulled the country through tough times to children whose efforts helped put an end to child labor. Throughout, Benson shares personal insights on his own "big picture" vision and offers instructive questions and exercises that will help reflective readers craft their own visions.
This little book of practical inspiration makes it clear that vision is a necessary ingredient of meaningful change. Readers will appreciate Benson's warm and personal approach as well as his interactive approach, which will help anyone come to understand his or her own social and spiritual potential. Vision will be useful to those seeking to find their place and purpose in the world, whether they are new graduates, professionals, parents, or retirees.

1. Vision

vision:vizh en (n) 1:the act or power of imagination 2:the act or power of seeing 3:unusual discernment or foresight 4: an imaginative conception of the future

THE CAPACITY to generate vision is among life’s most beautiful and unheralded gifts. As the definitions above reveal, it is a powerful act—this art of seeing and articulating what’s possible. As with other human capabilities, however, too often we fail to recognize this power. And too rarely do we engage in vision-making, much less make a commitment to realizing our vision.

Many of us don’t take the time, first of all, to inhabit visionary space, to discern and honor our inner promptings and passions. Regrettably, many of us also believe that vision-making is a province reserved for a select few. Regarding George Bernard Shaw’s famous saying, “You see things and you say, ‘Why?’ But I dream things that never were and say ‘Why not?,’” some are apt to assume that the words apply only to him and other renowned dreamers, not to themselves.

Others equate a vision with a goal. Our diverse goals—to lose weight, to sail the Aegean, to earn a certain salary—may involve envisioning a desired end, but vision goes far beyond mere goals. Goals, of course, encourage us to improve and enrich our lives. They give us a sense of control, order, and direction. From month to month and from year to year, however, they are likely to change. If you’re like me, you may revisit a few of them on New Year’s Eve and lament how little progress you made toward reaching them over the course of the previous year.

VISION: INSPIRED AND INSPIRING

Vision, on the other hand, is of another order entirely. It’s inspired and it inspires. That is, we sense that the conception is rooted in something greater than ourselves or our individual concerns, something enduring. It often encompasses a big truth, a higher purpose. It pulls us toward the future.

Vision is a summons. Values come into play when we imagine what can be. Accordingly, the result is also an image of what should be. Any vision, at its best, excites people to join hands in advancing the greater good.

Consider one example of vision-at-its-best: the Declaration of Independence, a document that helped to birth a nation grounded in “certain unalienable rights … among these … life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” And recall the words of the American visionary, Martin Luther King Jr., whose word-pictures in his memorable “I Have a Dream” speech, described what, with shared vision and will, could and should be.

So many of our dreams at first seem impossible,
then they seem improbable, and then,
when we summon the will,
they soon become inevitable.

—Christopher Reeve,
American actor and activist

King expressed a dream that descendants of former slaves and former slave owners would be able to sit down together, creating a new community. He shared his vision that his own four little children would one day live in a nation “where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” And he invoked a biblical vision, adopted as his own:

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.

If I were to wish for anything, I should not wish for
wealth and power, but for the passionate sense of
the potential, for the eye which, ever young and
ardent, sees the possible. Pleasure disappoints,
possibility never. And what wine is
so sparkling, what so fragrant, what
so intoxicating, as possibility!

—Søren Kierkegaard,
Danish philosopher

Hope is a waking dream.

—Aristotle

It was nearly two hundred years after the framing of the Declaration that King dramatically and poignantly reminded Americans of the most central value in the vision of the nation’s founders: “We hold these truths to be self-evident—that all men are created equal.” King was still holding fast to the dream, even while it remained for many a promise unfulfilled, as he stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. He said, “I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the meaning of its creed.”

ENCOMPASSING THE “BIG PICTURE”

The thread that extends from the Declaration of Independence to King’s 1963 speech, and beyond, is a symbolic one. The enduring existence of these threads, whether they extend from one community to another or from one generation to another, are characteristic of the way vision plays out in history—personal or public. It is the nature of vision to encompass the “big picture.” Implicit in a vision is the understanding that it may well take a long time to achieve what is imagined, if indeed the vision is ever fully achievable.

The election of Barack Obama as the forty-fourth president represents both vision achieved and vision renewed. On the one hand, we see America rising above race to choose a man based on his merits, on character. When we listen carefully, however, to Obama’s message, as articulated during his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention on August 28, 2008, he says that the idea of a just society for all still awaits us. The American promise—of prosperity and opportunity for each and all—is the shared vision that still “binds us together in spite of our differences, that makes us fix our eye not on what is seen, but what is unseen; that better place around the bend.”

FORGING A COMMON PURPOSE

Vision-at-its-best captivates and energizes people. The vision and the en-visioner inspire a collective enterprise. One by one, each “owns” the vision, personally. Together, all join hands in repairing one or another aspect of a broken world.

Thus, two key characteristics of vision are that, first, it is usually long term and “big picture” and, second, realizing it requires many hearts and souls, committed to a shared and common purpose.

RECOGNIZING OUR INTERDEPENDENCE

There is a subtle—and I think critical—idea implicit in the sustained pursuit of an inspired vision that relates to interdependence. The framers of the Declaration clearly recognized its importance, that my right to pursue happiness is inextricably intertwined with yours.

Give to us clear vision that we may know where to
stand and what to stand for—because unless
we stand for something, we shall fall for anything.

—Peter Marshall, U.S. Senate chaplain

The failure to read good books both enfeebles the
vision and strengthens our most fatal tendency—
the belief that the here and now is all there is.

—Allan Bloom, American philosopher

Perhaps the silver lining in the current global environmental crisis is the reiteration or rediscovery of this essential truth: All of life exists as an organic web of connectedness. My carbon footprint impacts your life and your children’s, and yours has the same effect on mine. Creation of a carbon-neutral world calls for all hands on deck. If we are to preserve the planet and life as we know it, each of us—not just a few of us—has to find the vision compelling enough to act on it, and to act in concert with the global community.

One Example: My Nonprofit

The nonprofit organization I lead, Search Institute, involves this kind of long-term, “big picture” vision and great interdependence among tho...

Table of contents

• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Chapter 1 - Vision
• Chapter 2 - Visionary
• Chapter 3 - Vision & the Social Good
• Chapter 4 - Vision & the Human Soul
• Chapter 5 - Creating One’s Personal Vision
• Further Reading