Paint the Future

When I awoke this morning, I still had my personal time line on my mind. I remembered the names of four more men that had an impact on me.

When I opened the file to add the names, I started getting a little bit discouraged. My sweet husband took a look at the expression on my face and asked what was wrong.

I told him that I look at this document, I look at my past, and I feel pretty discouraged. I made so many mistakes. I allowed so many people, especially men, leave their mark on me.

He looked at me with so much love and said, "You know. The phrase that comes to mind is Foolishness of Youth. So you shopped around a lot. That's what you do when you're young. That's what you sort of expect our daughters to do. That is not who you were when we met. By then, we were both fairly responsible."

I was still quibbing.

He resumed, "Were you foolish yesterday?"

I shook my head no.

"Were you foolish today?"

I shook my head no again.

"That's what counts."

Then Dale, my idea guy, my man who sees into the future, challenged me. "I want you to try something. I'd like you to spend an equal amount of time picturing your future as you spent making your time line."

I balked. "I don't know how to do that. I wrote another document about what I believe and what is important to me. Is that what you mean?"

"No. That's about the present. I want you to spend some time thinking about the future. About our future together."

"How? I don't know how to do that."

He looked at me kindly. "You've done it before. You have that poster you made, the collage of pictures and words that shows what you want to be like."

"Oh ... yeah."

I've actually done that exercise a couple times. The first time when I worked through Simple Abundance by Sarah Ban Breathnach. The second time, I was on a retreat led my my sister Eleanore, who was then working toward her master's degree so she could work as a spiritual director. In that retreat, we used simple blank books / journals that she purchased at a dollar store.

In both cases, you sit down with a bunch of magazines and a pair of scissors. You flip quickly through the pages of the magazine and cut out any pictures, words or phrases that seem to pop out at you. This works especially well if you're not distracted by anything else (like TV) and, perhaps, have soft instrumental music playing in the background. Then you take these images and words and arrange them as a collage.

The idea is to keep these images within your line of sight to help remind you of what is possible, what the secret desires of your heart are for your life.

These kinds of collages are called vision boards. It seems that there are now software products available for those who want to try a digital version of the exercise! That's interesting, I suppose. I guess it might work for some people. There are a number of books explaining the process, too. I wonder if they're really needed, though.

Anyway, it looks like getting out my crystal ball and checking into my future is now on my radar. I'll likely let the idea stew for a while before I jump into that exercise. I'll need a bit of time to dig up some magazines.

For a while, Dale and I sat side-by-side, each doing our own thing on our laptops. In the course of my surfing, I came across this poem by Antonio Machado:

Last night as I was sleeping
I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that I had a beehive
here inside my heart.
And the golden bees
were making white combs
and sweet honey
from my old failures.

I read it aloud to Dale. He quipped, "I don't know that I like the idea of a bunch of bees buzzin' around in my chest."
:: snort ::

On further refection he noted, "But that's kinda cool ... the idea that your heart is chugging away there repairing the damage of the past."

Yeah. That really is the underlying reason for doing these kinds of exercises. To recall where I've been. To realize that those episodes really are my past. To realize I've grown a lot, healed a lot. To acknowledge that I'm not making the same mistakes over and over in my present. And then to take that wisdom and knowledge forward to paint a picture of the future.

Isn't my sweet husband smart? See why I love to hang around this guy?