Imagine This

Walking through Central Park the other night, I was all but chased down (if you’re ever walking around, minding your own business, earbuds firmly in place, music at full volume, it guarantees you nothing – anybody desperately wanting to talk to you will move hell and earth to do so) by 3 people standing just inside the 72^nd St. entrance, 20 feet away from Strawberry Fields. The kinds of people who have spent tons of time in the Bay Area, but not San Francisco proper. The kinds of people who passionately pull strangers aside to sign petitions on behalf of the environment, but habitually leave lights on in unoccupied rooms. They belonged to a “leadership group” and invited me (along with several others they had just assembled) to announce my vision, around the John Lennon memorial. My vision for the world, mind you. I asked whether it would be videotaped, and they said no.

“Sure!” I eventually said, and as they led me (in the dark, in the cold) to the John Lennon “Imagine” circle, I stressed out about my vision, big time. It had to be good. (Any stress I may have felt about the possibility of getting whacked was slightly overpowered by a feeling best characterized as: “How bad could John Lennon lovers be?”)

One by one, we strangers of all ages, races, shapes, and sizes went around the circle, broadcasting our visions, really putting those visions out there. Of course, it was videotaped because how couldn’t it have been? “Leadership projects” like these were made to be filmed, and I have no problem imagining the organizers firing up the bong before they watch their handiwork on loop a few weeks from now.

When one organizer pointed the lit-up iphone at me, I looked into it and said my vision for the world is More Kindness and More Mindfulness. An updated version of my vision would be: more kindness, more mindfulness, and more people practicing what they preach more often.