Creating Your Own Vision

 

One day, I saw a picture in a magazine of an old movie being shown on the side of a building. I wanted to believe that the photographer had captured a sentimental moment; that the family often decided to spend their nights outside on the hill, drinking hot chocolate, and keeping warm under the most scrumptious of plaid, wool blankets. That the grass was never damp, and that there was always a heroine swooning over her latest leading man.

So, I pinned the picture to my office wall, and I looked at it every day, because I found it truly beautiful (and, I hope one day to watch a movie outside, on a hill, with hot chocolate and a blanket).

Turns out, it is actually a photograph by Tim Walker, an Englishman who is known for his extravagant staging and quirky, romantic sense of style; the children don't even live in the house, and I bet they weren't drinking hot chocolate. The entire scene was manufactured for British Vogue in 2007.

Yes I was disappointed, and for a few moments I wanted to take the magazine page off my wall, but it is still a beautifully composed photograph, and without it I would never have found a new artist to admire.

Finding things that make you smile, imagine, or dream, may seem silly or unproductive to some, but it really does help many of us move forward. When we are stuck, we are often advised to make Vision Boards; the theory being that if we can see it, we will strive for it, and it will appear. But sometimes I think that there are too many rules, and we start searching for the exact right way to do it; letting perfection get in the way of what should be fun and inspiring, and turning it into just another project, determined to show off our lofty goals and exceptional paper cutting skills. What if you don't do it properly, and you fail at Vision Board making? How depressing would that be?

I prefer to take a much broader, portable, more simple approach. I have wish-lists and pictures taped to my office wall, folded into a small box, and squirreled away in my handbag. This chaotic collection is my adaptation of a Vision Board. It includes crumpled articles about all sorts of heroes, pictures of places that interest me, words jotted down for a book that I want to write, random wishes, photographs of friends and family, a pile of candy hearts with my favorite words, a list of things to do tomorrow, a childrens book by John Lithgow, a scribbled question about buttons, and a post-it remembering the color of a new lipstick that I want to try.

My vision is simple; by imagining absolutely everything, I am bound to accomplish something.....

The photograph is a piece of the wall in my office (the image by Tim Walker is to the left of the middle, and what looks like the moon is actually a white thumb tack).