"All that matters really is a vision held with love and faith..."

It is my dad's birthday this week. When I was asked to write something about myself, as an entrepreneur and about making visions real, I kept on coming back to him. He achieved a lot in his life, from building three family houses, to saving the foreshores of Sydney, to running cattle farms, to being part of the movement that brought us networked computing and super chips, which have formed the basis of our world of communication today.

Yet, it is not in those achievements that I received the legacy I most value from him. In remembering my dad’s life, I also remember the week of his death. He was so weak and had few words left. There were two moments in that week that I consider his true legacy.

The first moment was his last words to me a few days before he died, croaky and broken, “You know, all that really matters Miriam is a vision held with love and faith.” It took so much effort for him to get those words out, and I just sat there with him afterwards for about half an hour. Him breathing heavily, me wondering what those words meant. I have held them since like a Buddhist Koan. Letting them sift through me and move me. I have quoted them to myself often in different situations where I was feeling helpless or lost. Somehow, even when I could not comprehend what he meant by them, they brought be back to my center, to what was important.

And then the other moment was on dad’s final day. I was sitting by his side with my mum, knowing it was not long to go, and there was this moment when he sat up with a vigor I had not seen since I arrived. He clutched at my arm with one hand and frustrated that the words would not come out, he vigorously gestured towards some unknown future with the other. I don't know why, but the words that came to me were, “Yes I will look after it dad”. As soon as the words fell out of my mouth, he shoved me away. As I walked out of the room, I glanced back and caught sight of him holding my mother’s face in a kiss whose tenderness I will never forget. It was only hours later that he left us.

My fathers death, which I was mysteriously well prepared for, began a new chapter in my life. I felt like I had made a soul pact with him on his final day. Not that he was telling me to do anything more, but that he was desperate for me to realize some truth of life he saw or felt really clearly as he was leaving. And I said “yes” to it. I just had to work out what that truth was.

Tracking back to how I understand Vision...

I began a process of formal “Visioning” when I was in my thirties. It was a process of understanding the craft and the art of a creative approach to life. I learned it through recent authors and processes like those found in “The Path of Last Resistance” and “The Artist's Way” as well as wisdom texts from the mystery traditions such as the Kabbalah and Christian wisdom teachers such as Richard Rohr and Cynthia Bourgeout.

When I first learned about visioning, I examined in my life the power we have as human beings to shape the reality around us. I began to see and feel my creative power to make things happen. I created companies and documentary projects and a family. But I fell into a trap. The trap of control. I started to think envisioning something meant that it was mine and I was also in charge of doing everything I could to make it happen. Result? Yep, exhaustion and burnout.

"All that matters really is a vision held with love and faith."

In those final moments with my dad, I recognized visioning as being different than I had originally conceived it. This creative power I had experienced was not actually mine. It was more like tapping into a current.

As the truth of those final words sunk in, I started to understand how visionary leadership is an everyday activity.

That is was not about building an empire or changing the world, but instead following the possibility of love and faith in every relationship, in every season, and every action. To let that love and faith move me to places I didn't completely understand and where I couldn't control the outcome. So far it has meant calling on greater courage. A courage to feel the pain, grief and joy that comes with the cycles of birth and death. And in all of this to reflect boldly the bigger story for myself, for my children, and for the world.