Vision is contextualised purpose.

In my previous blog, I wrote:“A vision is not a goal or an objective. It explains the context and inspires action.” Last week, during a meeting, I wrote on my notes: Vision is “contextualised purpose.”

Vision begins with a fundamental human question, that of purpose or meaning. I was recently introduced to Jack Canfield’s 10-step process of discerning our life purpose. The steps dealt with love, enjoyment, intuition, idealism, and fulfilment. But there was also space to consider financial realities, good and bad relationships, health, boundaries and struggles. The point is this: purpose has context, and that context includes more than a social and economic analysis, it also includes intuition, creativity and experience.

Vision is contextualised purpose. My life’s mission is to journey with people in “developing a new imagination for our future.” This idea does not come from somewhere. It comes from a heart that sees much suffering and despair. It comes from a mind that seeks to understand a specific history and the communities that experience that history. It comes from a belief that rejects the idea that we have to choose between freedom and fairness. This is only part of my context.

Understanding the explanation of context as vision, and not merely as a report or research findings, has one advantage – it allows for values such as creativity, imagination and appreciation to become part of the talk of the team. It allows the team members to work with their intuition, to share stories and experience. Intuition challenges dearly held beliefs to give meaning and insight to the images of intuition.

It seems that the envisioning process goes something like this:

experience -> belief + insight -> envision -> embody -> experience

As much as inequality, fraud, crime, economic hardship, abuse and violence are part of my context, my heart, head and gut are also part of my context. Only when I begin to understand this, vision becomes grounded and inspiring.