By Dan Svedarsky
CROOKSTON -- This time of year, many folks pause to reflect upon the year past and vow to make things better in the new year ahead. One intriguing way to turn these vows or resolutions into action is to put them in the form of a vision or mission statement.
Mission statements were mainstreamed in 1989 with the publishing of Stephen Covey's best-selling book, "Seven Habits of Highly Effective People." Covey said putting on paper those core values that describe what we are about gives us a "compass" for action in daily life. He argues persuasively that the only factor we really can control is ourselves -- the inside out approach -- and that we can make a huge difference, one person at a time.
One of my personal and professional passions is sustainability -- living our individual and collective lives in such manner that we not diminish the world's resource-use options for those who follow us. Recently, it was my good fortune to have a wonderful essay by Donella Meadows come into my life. It's called "Envisioning a sustainable world."
Meadows, a graduate of Carleton College in Northfield, Minn., and Harvard, was a pre-eminent scientist and writer who taught at Dartmouth for many years. She highlights the central importance of "vision" in the policy process, whether for addressing pollution, hunger or other societal and global issues.
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She describes a workshop she moderated on hunger which assembled some of the world's best nutritionists, agronomists, demographers, ecologists and field workers in development. All of them had devoted their lives in one way or another to ending hunger.
She launched the workshop by asking, "What is your vision of a world without hunger?" Surprisingly, she discovered, the participants were so constrained by their perceptions of all the reasons why hunger would be hard to eliminate that they dared not dream or at least share those dreams.
She was particularly struck by one comment: "I have a vision, but it would make me feel childish and vulnerable to say it out loud. I don't know you all well enough to do this."
Why is it, Meadows asked, "that we can share our cynicism, complaints, and frustrations without hesitation with perfect strangers, but we can't share our dreams? How did we arrive at a culture that constantly, almost automatically, ridicules visionaries? Whose idea of reality forces us to 'be realistic'?
"When were we taught -- and by whom -- to suppress our visions?"
Consider the magic and pervasive influence of Martin Luther King Jr.'s historic "I Have a Dream" speech. First, he had the vision; but then, he also had the boldness to eloquently share the dream with the masses and made the world a better place in the process.
Like many of Herald readers, I enjoyed some precious "grandpa time" over the holidays. Meadows reminds us that, "Children, before they are squashed by cynicism, are natural visionaries. They can tell you clearly and firmly what the world should be like: There should be no war, no pollution, no cruelty, no starving children. There should be music, fun, beauty, and lots and lots of nature. People should be trustworthy and grownups should not work so hard. It's fine to have nice things, but it's even more important to have love.
"As they grow up, children learn that these visions are 'childish' and stop saying them out loud. But inside all of us, if we haven't been too badly bruised by the world, there are glorious visions."
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How can we help children hold on to their dreams and that wonderful instinctive creativity? How can we adults learn from the little people and rekindle a sense of optimism and vision to make the world a better place in 2011, one person at a time?
It can start with a vision statement to guide our thoughts, actions and interactions. If we lose our way, we can go back to that statement.
In the words attributed to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, "Whatever you do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius and power and magic in it."
Svedarsky is a wildlife professor and director of the Center for Sustainability at the University of Minnesota, Crookston.
