Visions

It's all about your dreams, and what excites you.

Sure, we will offer inspiring tools, and stories about community and livelihoods and healthy living for everyone... all the tactics and strategies for a better world. But each of those things are only valuable when they come to fulfilling our highest goals -- and when they bring you joy along the way. So that's our focus.

What are your grandest visions? If you have a hard time seeing them, think back to your childhood, when you had more time to imagine the world you wanted. Maybe it was a life with the right people, maybe it was adventure, maybe it was accomplishment. Each of these pictures reside somewhere, and the world where they reside is still a possible future.

Those are our very best guides.

Ross Tolman Larson, my grandfather, had a crippled, arthritic body by the time I knew him: his fingers were twisted so much that they could not be used except as rough hooks to hang items on. He lived this way for decades until his death. He was also one of the most cheerful people I have ever had the privilege to know. He was always happy to see us grandkids; although he couldn't do much with us, I recall him trying, like showing how he had rigged up a hoe so that he could dig in his garden. I was not impressed, but I always admired his attitude.

I believe I now know why he had such an attitude and has been able to have such an effect on me to this day: at the end of one of his writings he says that his purpose is "to motivate more people to believe their health is in their hands, and to start today to take charge of their own destiny." He ran his own health food store, he invented a pill dispenser, and he wrote a book about nutrition. He never stopped, even in small things such as his garden that was a small bare patch of dirt with very few plants which didn't look like they ever bore anything edible. His vision carried him through pain and depression, but beyond that: it made him a monumental psychological force to his progeny.

Personally, I've heard the word "idealist" many times in my life, and I've finally come to embrace it. I have had some success in worldly things so I know that it's possible to be a dreamer who can also contribute in practical ways to the world. As a matter of fact, I believe that my idealism is the underlying driver that enabled the rest of my accomplishments. First comes the dream.

Everyone uses many tools that provide different support to us. The tools we offer here are not to replace any of those but rather to recognize and magnify all the good ones. We hope to illuminate how all these lead to the ultimate visions which are so personal and meaningful – and which will lift the world in which our grandchildren will live.