The Power of Vision

"It is essential that we think about, dream about and have positive visions of our future, especially in the difficult times in”

Some years back I came across a program titled, The Power of Vision by Joe Barker. Throughout the program there were themes from three scholars that highlighted examples of how positive visions can impact individuals, communities and nations. One writer asked if, "Great nations were a result of great visions or were great visions a result of great nations?" And as it turns out, great nations are preceded only by and are born out of positive visions, and where there is no vision, poverty resides. This also holds true for individuals.

From an individual perspective the work and life experiences of Victor Frankel, Author of Man's Search for Meaning, has impacted me the most. He was a psychiatrist with a thriving practice before being rounded up along with other Jewish and Polish people and they were subjected to what was essentially “Hell on Earth” in the concentration camps of Auschwitz. Frankel set three goals for himself, first to survive, secondly to help where he could, and third, to learn something from this experience. In his book he shared stories of the daily horrors that he and other prisoners endured at the hands of their guards.  

His focus was primarily on how the prisoners in the camps survived this unfathomable experience. Many died because of the conditions and some took their own life. But he noticed a commonality among those that survived. Each of them had “something yet significant to do in their life.” Some had manuscripts to complete and only they could finish, others it was to see family.   Frankel surmised that it was the positive view of their future that kept them alive.

Frankel writes, “I became disgusted with the state of affairs which compelled me, daily and hourly, to think of only such trivial things. I forced my thoughts to turn into another subject. Suddenly I saw myself standing on the platform of a well-lit warm and pleasant lecture room. In front of me set [an] attentive audience on comfortable upholstered seats.  I was giving a lecture on the psychology of the concentration camp! All that oppose me at that moment became objective, seen and described from the remote viewpoint of science. By this method I succeeded somehow in the rising above the situation, above the suffering of the moment, and I observed them as if they were already of the past.”

“It is a peculiarity of man that he can only live by looking to the future and this is his salvation in the most difficult moments of his existence…”