Visualize It

My daughter, who is fine-tuning her skills as a designer, says the key to good design is in being able to visualize something clearly first. 

 

Today I was trapped for hours in traffic on the Mass Pike, unable to escape one depressing news report after another.  I suppose I could have changed to the Symphony station on SiriusXM radio, the listener equivalent of burying my head in the sand, but I felt oddly attentive to each factoid as if a doctor were reeling off a list of my own lab results.  Each truth was amazingly personal.  After all, don’t we all share in the ownership of these issues?   There I sat in my tight cockpit, becoming claustrophobic as the Eurozone crisis, the jobless rate in the US, the budget deficit, the intractability of polarized party politics, the violence in our streets, and Man’s basic inhumanity to Man piled up  around me.  As various voices decried one presidential candidate or the other, I started to realize how difficult it is in this day and age for even the most brilliant of minds or the most seasoned of public figures to make an appreciable dent in the common trash pile of top issues.  That’s when I started to panic that solutions did not exist; that we have passed the point of no return.

I do not pretend to have any answers.  On the other hand, we all realize that “same old, same old” ain’t gonna cut it.  This is when my daughter’s mantra hit me—v-i-s-u-a-l-i-z-e—and I started imagining living in a different sort of world.

Imagine what would happen if . . .

. . .if we handcuffed each member of Congress to a colleague from the across the aisle, forcing them to co-exist for 48 hours.

. . .if cars with even numbered license plates could only be driven on even calendar dates, while those with odd numbered plates could only be driven on the odd days.

. . .if we heeded George Washington’s warning and got rid of political parties.

. . .if respect were an inalienable right.

. . .if corporate executives, like the captains of ships, suffered the fates of their leadership—and only got bonuses from what remained after profits were booked and all other employees were compensated.

. . .if it were our accepted cultural practice to walk up to strangers on the street and introduce ourselves.

. . .if we had to surrender our cell phone into a locked slot in our car, concealing the keypad, before the car would be able to start.

. . .if one day each year all television stations and social media sites voluntarily blacked themselves out.

. . .if all the oil companies became fully invested in alternative energy sources.

. . .if all people felt like they were created equal.

. . .if doing right were more important than being right.