A few weeks ago Jarrett and I participated in a historic homes tour in our neighborhood. We’ve been working on restoring our house for the better part of two years and it was a mad dash to finish all ongoing projects in time to welcome groups of strangers into the place. I had found some old photos of the house from the 1940s and, of course, I had some before photos from when we bought the house that I wanted to display.
I ventured down into our jam packed and slightly precarious basement to find some cork boards I knew were hiding somewhere in the mess of paint cans and still, as of yet, unpacked boxes. After some considerable effort I located the now dust coated cork boards and brought them upstairs. I remembered what I had used them for last, but I was not prepared for how unearthing and looking at them again would make me feel.
Here, displayed before me, were my 2021 vision boards made in October of 2020. Relics of a time when we were all looking for ways to regain some control over our lives and also desperately in need of dreams and goals to look forward to when life got back to “normal.” I chose each photo and scene thoughtfully and deliberately, hoping that they would capture these monumental wants within me. I arranged them carefully and hung the boards on the wall directly in my line of sight when seated on my stationary bike, a place I spent a lot of time that year.
We had left our lives in Milwaukee, our friends and everything familiar, and moved in with Jarrett’s parents in Green Bay just as the pandemic kicked off. It was a weird and uncomfortable time, but we had support, we had our health and we were grateful, always keeping our eyes ahead at the future we saw for ourselves.
As my eyes moved from one pinned photo to the next it became abundantly clear how divergent our path had become from those visions, not better, not worse, but undeniably different. As I began to remove the tacks and take apart the board I noted that not everything had been abandoned or left unfulfilled.
On one side of the board was everything I hoped for in our future home in Door County, or at least what I thought I wanted. A large dark exterior surrounded by trees, a certain kind of tile, an inviting kitchen, all wonderful things, but not meant for us, not yet and maybe not ever quite like what was on that board. We haven’t given up on the dream of having a place to live and call our own in Door County, but much like everything else in the world right now it just isn’t an approachable or affordable prospect. We accepted this, albeit begrudgingly, in spring of 2021 and instead opted to buy a fixer upper in Green Bay. This was not the path or plan, but it has ultimately been a positive and instructional experience. We’ve both grown a lot as people and as a couple in this beautiful old house.
Another photo I took down was a photo of a beautiful beach somewhere in the tropics, a goal we had for 2021 was to travel down to Panama to visit my sister and her husband in their new home and almost exactly a year after creating the board we did just that, a trip that I will always treasure and remember fondly.
The photo next to the beach was that of a gorgeous and lively table-scape shot from above, presumably of a lovely al fresco dinner party. As I held up the picture I called to Jarrett in the other room, “well we did eat a lot didn’t we?” A pause, “what?!” He shouted from the kitchen, “never mind,” I said with a laugh as I set the dinner party vision aside.
Next to the dinner party was a black and white photo of a charming outdoor cafe in Paris, dozens of tables crowding the patio, rattan chairs filled with people chatting, sipping wine or espresso and just generally looking cool and Parisian. We haven’t made it back to Paris just yet, but I know we will someday.
As I set aside Paris my eye wandered to the two images that were the most uncomfortable for me to look at, they were reminders of how different our lives are now from those that I manifested on that board in 2020. I had put them away somewhere dark, out of my line of vision and when I brought them out into the light, I had a physical reaction to them. I think I might have muttered, “wow” or “yikes” to myself and innately I felt like I should hide or destroy them as quickly as I could. I felt embarrassed at my arrogant assertion that because you want something you can have it, and even more deeply ashamed at the belief that the wanting itself will always be there. My eyes suddenly began to fill with tears and I felt a catch in my throat. I picked up the first picture, a black and white of a beautiful woman gazing out an open window, the curtain blowing slightly in the breeze. Dressed in a silk robe, she looked peaceful and serene as she rested her left hand lovingly on top of the naked curve of her pregnant belly and her right hand below it. Hopeful and calm, looking out the window with certainty, I knew I wanted what she seemed to have in this photo. My eyes found their way to the next logical vision on this board, a tiny beautiful human wrapped in a blanket hugging itself, probably from some photographer’s newborn portfolio.
This one dream, one grand vision had not, and may never, come to fruition and I had truly mourned that truth, but I hadn’t mourned the lost desire and the zeal for the dream. The realization of impermanence, not just our own, but that of our designs and ambitions is a difficult one to accept, but ultimately freeing. Freeing because it means we are capable of great change and adaptation, if our yearnings don’t materialize it doesn’t mean our lives have any less meaning or that we stop envisioning what our future lives might look like. My first instinct may have been to bury the existence of what I wished for, but didn’t receive, because that implies failure, so better to hide the evidence, “What dream? What failure?” By looking directly at those photos and acknowledging it I not only saw what was lost, but what was gained. I could see how I have grown since I pieced together that board, how my perspective has shifted and my capacity to persevere has increased. I’m not putting all my old dreams away completely, but I am making room for the new.
The quote I had hanging on the board was from Aristotle, “We are what we repeatedly do, excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” I think any goal or dream that we have is generally only achieved when we relentlessly work towards it, this doesn’t insure you will reach it, but it certainly increases the odds. Doing the work is the habit, but I think creating and revising those dreams and visions is a habit too and an important one at that. Pulling out and examining your internal compass is never a wasted exercise.
After I gathered all the photos into a pile I waited until I had fully composed myself and then walked into the kitchen, “hey, should I keep these?” I said to Jarrett as I held out all the vision board images for him to see. He paused for a moment looking over the images and then said “not if you don’t want to,” and then with a thoughtful smile, “we can always make a new one.”