A vision - some idea of how the future could look and feel – is what keeps activists and organizers working year after year after year. Since these kinds of people imagine a world worth working for, fighting for and sacrificing for, they don’t give up. They know that anything a human can think, they can find a way to make it. Going to the moon, cars, electricity, microwave ovens, light bulbs, you name it, everything that exists today, started out in someone’s head as a vision.

Once you allow yourself to create a vision, you won’t be able to stop seeing how everything could be so much better, so much more beautiful, sensible, cost effective and easier.

Maybe a prompt can get you going. If you had magic powers, what things would you change in your neighborhood, and community? I mean things like houses, streets, sidewalks, cars, light posts, etc.

In my neighborhood I would get rid of those hideous telephone poles and electric lines and satellites. I would figure out how to put fiber optic cable and electric lines in the same tubes, then bury them underground (the same way our gas lines are buried now). I would pull down all the backyard fences so that all that land was wide open again, and then I would plant gardens, trees, playground equipment, walking trails, and bike trails, fire pits and picnic benches. It would feel like all of us were living on a grand estate. I would hire the best automotive designers in the world to design a line of little tiny electric commuter cars and then I’d give one to everyone.

When we were kids, a bunch of cardboard boxes, or a pile of junk looked like castles to us. We loved making our own little worlds out of sheets and blankets. Well, that innate creativity is still in us. We can still think like children. We can set our minds free and see what we see when they go wild.

Don’t let people bully you away from doing your vision work. Creativity is what it means to be human.