Writing the Vision

2 days ago
3 min read

I made several watercolors like this Spirit of the Forest with Coquí during the evenings I was able to gather my energy and spend some time painting last year. — I made several watercolors like this *Spirit of the Forest with Coquí* during the evenings I was able to gather my energy and spend some time painting last year.

During the pandemic, like many others, I was at home, thinking. I didn’t have as much time as other people, because the organization I work for continued providing services the entire time. But there came a time when I couldn’t keep going and I started writing.

I’m not sure exactly when I started writing, but at some point, I began writing my life. Not the life I had been living, but the life I wanted.

I wrote every single detail that I could think of. I imagined everything, and wrote it by hand in loose leaf paper.

In my mental life, I lived in my house in Puerto Rico, painted all day, had a garden and even a dog. It gave me great hope and joy, even if it was only a fantasy.

I have always kept those pages because they are a sort of guide to my own soul. The thoughts that came out in those moments were both medicine and escape, an act of magic and a heartfelt prayer.

To me, it was the first action I took to return to what I call my “real life.” Because for a long, long time, all I could write were to-do lists. I wrote to do lists for work and for anything else. I could write social work notes, even some letters, and work emails. But I couldn’t write anything beautiful or satisfying.

I wasn’t afraid of the blank page, I simply had nothing inside. No thoughts. I was focused on survival until that moment when I did not get sick beyond a few days of body aches and fever, but so many people lost or almost lost their lives.

I didn’t write about the feelings of the pandemic, but about the vision I proposed to myself after survival.

So many years before I had survived cancer, and emerged full of action toward dreams not-yet-fulfilled. This time, I was caught in a life I didn’t know how to emerge from.

It’s been some years since that time, and my life has changed. It’s not my loose-leaf-paper vision realized, but a bridge between the ideal and the reality I was living before. This time I was less graceful, but not less determined.

I fully expect the vision to continue developing and realizing, and the equation of perfect art days vs regular work days to continue improving as it has. And while it’s true that I wish my life had transformed overnight, I understand that there is a part of my soul that is involved with the mission I have at the school where I work every day.

While cleaning my studio this first part of the year, I discovered I have created many artworks in the few evening hours or weekends that I am able to claim for myself and my art. I’m thinking that there’s a lesson in this slowly but surely process: sometimes all or nothing doesn’t work. And the only choice is to do, for as short a time as it is necessary. Do for 5 minutes, for for 1 minute, do for 30 seconds. And after one month, the seconds and the minutes will add up and show up in our work.

While less graceful and much slower, I am happy to have accomplished action and progress.

If I had to suggest where to start, I would say: start with a vision. A vision for that ideal life that you wish you could live right now. Write it in great detail, with playfulness, joy and a vibrant imagination.

Our souls can’t help it. They need to go toward the light that the vision of one’s true life proposes.

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