Visualization Exercise

I need your help.  I have this little gadget that they are calling a “magic wand”, and which is described as a “visualization aid”.  I want to try it out but need your help with a little visualization exercise.  Bear with me here.

So take a second and relax your mind and take a deep breath.  Free your mind of the worries and concerns of the moment and let’s take a little journey together.  Start by picturing the world.  Yes, the whole world and all of the people and things in it (work with me here).  That is too much to visualize so let’s start with just one thing – say, a new baby just entering our world.

Now, try to fill in all of the details.  Visualization requires details.  The sights and sounds and smells.  What is going on?  Who is there? Fill in the whole picture.  I see a Mom and Dad and some crying and “whew!” a smelly diaper and an older sibling and something burning on the stove….ok, too much.

Now, make your world perfect.  This is where the magic wand comes in.  With a swipe of the wand I eliminate hunger from my world.  War is gone.  No illness.  Nobody has any debt.  Everyone has shelter and clothing.  There are no cigarettes.  Nobody is addicted to drugs or alcohol.  Here, use the wand.  Take a minute and create your perfect world.  It doesn’t matter how it works, just enjoy the fact that you can create your own fantasy world.

Pretty neat, huh?  Fill in the rest of the details of your fantasy world.  You are painting a picture.  A picture of the world you think should be.  Everyone gets what they want and need. 

Now, we need to set the world you have created in motion, and then come back and visit in a day or week or year to see how our perfect world turns out.  Let me just flip this….bear with me this is a new app and we are beta testing, working out the details.  Let me just turn the….

Ok, here is the problem.  I went to set my perfect world in motion and got an error message.  Apparently trying to move forward with perfect weather and no illness violates some “reality function”.  We can imagine a world with perfect weather but we cannot put that vision in motion because in reality we cannot control the weather.  Hmmm, this app is not as perfect as I thought.

Oh well, we can deal with a little bad weather but the fact that people will continue to get sick and die is truly a bummer.  Unfortunately this is an unalterable reality.  No matter how much we change our world it will never be perfect, because of the reality of nature.  Things live and die, and the world we inhabit will never be so perfect as to eliminate the heartache of watching a loved one grow old and pass away.

Back to the new gadget.  I see two settings under the “human nature” tab.  One is labeled “free will”.  If I click off that option my perfect world moves forward with everyone doing exactly the right thing every time.  Perfect.  But the vision is grayed-out, as though it isn’t real.  Everyone makes the right choices every time but the whole storyline looks like an old science fiction movie where society has attained perfection but nobody is really happy.

There is another option where everyone is forced to make the right decisions.  But that one turns out…ugly.  No thanks.

But when I allow my perfect scenario, this perfect world I have created to move forward while allowing everyone to have free will, I notice something right away.  It seems people don’t always make the right choices.  Even though they start with these perfect conditions (thanks, magic wand) when left to themselves some choose choices that are not “perfect”.

Before long the perfect picture I painted starts to look more and more like the world we have.

Perhaps instead we should strive not for a perfect world but for a perfect system.  Perhaps we need a society in which people can make their own decisions and then bear the fruit or pay the consequences for their choices.  We should have a society where everyone has the same opportunities, not one where everyone turns out the same.

We need to realize that we cannot control the weather or wish away disease and death.  We cannot ensure that everyone will be born with the same abilities or into the same circumstances.  We should keep the picture in our mind of the perfect world we envision, but we need to temper that perfect vision with the reality that we know exists.

When you take the perfect world from your vision and you correct it for reality it turns out many of us are not that far from “perfect”.  We have challenges and problems and because we have free will we sometimes make bad choices.  But we have food and clothing and shelter and loved ones and pets.  We exercise and read and play games.  We enjoy life, even with all of its imperfections. 

There are problems in our world but they will not be fixed by eliminating free will, because that violates the reality function.  You cannot decide how to run someone else’s life.  Your area of control ends at your life.  Be happy that you can control your own life and make your own decisions because there is so much we do not have control over.

We should not long for a magic wand that would take away people’s free will and force them to do the right thing.  In the first place, such a world would be gray and meaningless and devoid of the joy of living.  But second, such a “magic wand” in the wrong hands is nothing more than a tool of slavery.  We have to question who gets to decide what it means to live a perfect life and make “all the right decisions”. 

We don’t have a magic wand or perfect world simulator and there is no all-wise guru who can tell us what all the right decisions are.  All we have are billions of imperfect individuals making millions of decisions at any given moment, all without any central coordination.  And all in all it works pretty well.

Most of us live pretty good lives.  We are born and grow and learn and work and live and love and die generation after generation.  Society is not becoming perfect; far from it.  Our lives are not perfect; far from it.  But all things considered the vast majority of people are good and the vast majority of decisions they make are the right ones.

We should not lose our vision of a better world.  You have to be able to “see” something in your mind before you can make it reality.  But let’s picture a reality that can actually happen, one that includes all of us making better decisions freely.  Let’s hold a vision in our minds of a world based on reality and freedom.  A “perfect” world where we are all free to be imperfect.