Vision should almost be on an endangered quality list along with character, courage, and discipline. The reason is simple. It takes too much work to be a visionary. It's much easier just to go with the flow and do what's expected of us. It takes courage to break out of our conventional thought patterns. It takes confidence and daring to risk failure with a new idea or a new approach. Visionaries tend to fail many times before they ever succeed, and most people feel too fragile to take risks. They would rather be safe and secure.
It, also, takes a lot of old-fashion perspiration to be a visionary. It takes discipline to sit down with a pencil and paper and vow not to get up from your desk until you find five new ways to do something, three new ways to improve something, or two new options for salvaging something that is in danger of disintegrating. It takes endurance to get on your knees and stay there until God super-naturally ignites a fresh thought in your mind. It takes hard work to plan for what could happen in six months, a year, three years, or five years in your business, family, marriage, or community. It probably won't ever happen anyway, so why dream?
Many of us seem to think that dreams, great plans, and creative bursts of creativity are reserved for writers, physicists, composers, and artists. They are not for us ordinary people with ordinary vocations, ordinary families, and ordinary relationships. But I disagree with that kind of thinking, I believe and I hope you will agree with me that vision, like courage and discipline, is a character trait that can and should be stimulated and developed in anyone who is willing to understand just what it is, and then make up their mind to strive to work hard at making it part of their everyday life. So it's time for all the visionaries to take that idea, plan, strategy, and start putting it to work for yourself, your family, your workplace, and most of all for Willacy County. Make this year and those to come be a successful period in your life because of, not in spite of, your visions.