Power of a Vision

It is strange, being wakened in the wee small hours of the morning by the contemplation of vision.  My brain has been working on it & working on it & still still in a quandary.

While there's nothing more powerful than a clear vision of what can be, at the same time, it's totally utterly completely worthless without being backed up by energy effort action to take it from the meant to be to the is. The initial vision has the potential to be unspeakably powerful, but only when it's actually realized.

Confusing.  Yet true.

Example - it feels like the great value that I brought to my mother, my brothers  & sister was that I seemed to be the only one who SAW us, enVISIONED us, as a whole (in all its meanings) family rather than the piecemeal family they seemed to experience.  

To this day, I hold Peter & Michael in my heart as my brothers & Mim as my sister.  To this day, part of my life's goal is to be a good sister, just as it was to be a good daughter & is now to be a good wife.  

Living those roles fully & vibrantly were part of my operating instructions from the first moment my eyes could focus.  Part of my social emotional spiritual DNA.  And holding a vision of us all as a family is always & forever in my heart.  It might not express itself in the way I once longed for, but it is fully what it is, as funky & quirky as that might be.  As long as that vision of family - each person being fully himself, herself within a greater whole - is in my heart, it has some edge of reality.

Right now, my great vision is of a culture that honors the power & importance of our older members.  It's easy to see how we got into such a mess & imperative to change our ways or face the consequences.  

Mine is the first generation to experience the separation of ages rather than the mingling & meshing.  It wasn't easy having Grandma or Grandpa living with a family, having to provide a room for Aunt Maisie who never married, but gifts were exchanged through the trials & tribulations as well as the high times & happy moments that accompanied providing them a home.  

Years & years ago, on one of the police t.v. dramas, a young Latino detective was stunned by an All-American colleague's dither about what to do with his elcerly in-laws.  "We'd just throw a carpet down in the garage & turn it into an apartment," he marveled.  I was a young adult when that episode of whatever aired, I just saw it one time, but that line & the look on the young officer's face is wth me still. 

Today, it's a greater challenge for a family to provide a safe space for an older relative.  There often isn't a younger adult in the house all day, no one around to be there for an elderly relative.  

Today, it often takes a community to provide the support that family once provided.  It can require a lot of different people to provide the life support once offered through a younger female relative - managing meds & chauffeuring, social time & meals.  

Most people focus on what is in front of us, on what exists - a reality where separating out our olders is the most convenient (to everyone) thing to do, but not the best.  Not for them, not for us, not for our communities & culture.

Perhaps the reason I hold the vision of something different healthier better is because it was NOT easy having Mom in my life 24/7/365.  It was HARD, on so many levels.  It almost tore me apart.  Came really close. Two ministers - MINISTERS, and one a bishop! - told me that I had to get out, to live my own life.  But I couldn't.  It was more than the vision in my heart & teachings in my head of children being there for their parents. It was a vision of being there for anyone in need of help that I can provide - another vision that was apparently part of my original operating instructions.

At this moment in time, I am filled with a vision of a community of elders who interact on a regular, daily basis with youngers.  That's a tall order to tackle.  Well, not so much if I think globally & act locally.  Whether it is Rydal Park or Cairnwood Village, there are communities of older friends right in my own back yard that I can work with & for.  

Big changes are happening at Cairnwood Village as its leadership changes hands from Khary King Allen to Paige Gunther Austin.  Different strengths, different dynamics, different vision.  


There IS great power in having a vision, in holding it in your heart, in honoring its value enough that you finally make it happen.  But it comes with terrible responsibility - when it is YOUR vision, there's no shrugging it off onto someone else's shoulders.  You are its steward guardian champion, no one else.  Oh no - more sleepless nights ahead, pondering that one.