The visioning process is an articulation of “what you really want, not what you think you can get,” says Meadows, who notes that the end of apartheid South Africa was unimaginable until it happened. Space travel was the same.

Excerpted from a 1994 talk by Donnella Meadows:

“I think that we are all born with a sense of what the world should be like and what we deeply want the world to be like. You ask a child to make a vision of a sustainable world and it comes flowing forth and there’s not a bit of resistance. So this is clearly something we have had engendered into us by two things. One is the general culture, particularly the scientific, objective culture. And second, by our disappointments: as we grow old, we’ve tried things, they haven’t worked, and instead of using disappointments to learn lessons and become more effective in pushing toward our vision, we’ve let go of our vision.

Remember, when you envision, that you are trying to state, articulate, or see what you really want, not what you think you can get. It’s very quick for most of us rationally trained people to go out to the farthest envelope of what we think is possible. We are putting all kinds of analysis and models in there of what is possible. I never would have said that it was possible for apartheid to end in South Africa, or for the whole of the Eastern world to come back towards democracy. And yet it happened. So that tells you something about our model of possibilities. You have to throw them away. You have to think about what you want. That’s the essence of vision. What is a sustainable world that you would like to live in? That would satisfy your deepest dreams and longings?

Second, if you can get there, to that picture, you are under no obligation, whatsoever, to tell us how to get there from here. The easiest way to shoot down a visionary is to have someone express a vision, and you say, “Oh yeah, but how do we get there from here?” And if the visionary can’t tell you, you sweep away the vision. This is our rational left-brain working again. My experience in having, now many times, created a vision and then actually brought it, in some form, into being, my experience is that I never know at the beginning how to get there but, as I articulate the vision, put it out, share it with people, it gets more polished, and the path reveals itself. And it would have never revealed itself if I were not putting out the vision of what I really wanted and finding that other people really want it, too. Holding on to the vision reveals the path and there’s no need to judge the vision by whether the path is apparent.

As I said already, the visioning, wherever it comes from, I don’t understand this at all, it isn’t a rational place, and it doesn’t come from figuring out. But visions do have to be honed by rationality. There does need to be a responsibility in vision. I can envision climbing to the top of a tree and flying off. I may really want to do that but my rationality and my knowledge of how the world works tells me that’s not a responsible vision.

Visions become responsible through all sort of processes. The best one I know is sharing it with other people who bring in their knowledge, their points of view, and their visions. The more a vision is shared, the more responsible it gets, and also the more ethical.

Another thing I’ve discovered is that once I’m clear and have worked on a vision, it becomes more and more real to me. I can literally see it.”