Horizons

[This blog's " feel " will be slightly different than usual. It is written more like I am sitting or walking beside you as a guide in a journey of your thoughts, visions, and heart. There are few hyperlinks and no research, just you and me contemplating horizons.]

Early one evening, I was walking down the beach with my wife when I looked up from watching the seashell-covered ground right at me to the developing sunset in the distance. The shell-covered beach and the sunset were right before me, but one was getting all the attention. It hit me how long I had been looking down. Look at what I was missing!

We love sunrises and sunsets, a mountain range in the distance, a lightning weave, and a nighttime cityscape. They provide us with moments that move us. We don’t necessarily consider why we are moved. We simply know we are and often seek that out. But horizons provide more than unforgettable moments.

The challenge to "expand” or “broaden” your horizons is about growing in knowledge and experience. It’s a long-standing phrase used to encourage us to go beyond where we are. What I am inviting you to is different from that. I think that our need isn’t necessarily about expanding or broadening the horizon as much as it is about paying attention to what it can be telling us.

My aim here is to cultivate a whole-person experience as you look over the year ahead.

Moving away from one year’s sunset into another year’s sunrise, do you know what’s ahead of you? Are you anticipating more of the same? Has the past year been one of looking down and nose to the grindstone to get the job done? Have you looked up recently?

As you read this blog, consider two approaches to the horizons of next year. One way is to close your eyes and imagine yourself sitting on a beach or a boulder looking out over the next year.

A second approach could be you, in your mind’s eye, driving your dream car from month to month and season to season from January to December of next year. Each month and season being its own horizon.

What we have here is a different way to open up planning as an individual or a team for the year to come. If you approach that planning work differently, you might see new opportunities and experience different energy and results next year than you did this past year. Does that sound like something you would like to take a look at? Lift your eyes, look at the horizon before you, and let’s explore from various perspectives and impact.

Stirrings and Inspirations
We feel horizons. When the sun emerges or descends at the horizon and disperses new patterns of light and color each and every time, it stirs us. We are so inspired by those regular displays of nature that we seek them out. Think of the disappointment when you make a special trip to a special location where the view is usually breathtaking, and it ends up cloudy. You feel cloudy in that moment too, don’t you? I do.

Even after decades, a certain place on the bridge going to the Isle of Palms near Charleston, South Carolina, never ceases to move me. It is at the point where the Atlantic to the horizon is visible. I even had a logo made with the “view” years ago! It is literally a physiological response of giddiness! You know the feeling. That same sense happens at a point on I-26 when I come around a bend and catch my first glimpse of the Appalachian Mountain foothills. I’ll discuss “anticipation” below.

As you consider the horizons of your life and work for next year, pay attention to how your engagement of those horizons affects you. What you see at first may be a duplication or continuation from this year. If you need help seeing differently, consider picking and listening to any other blogs you find on the website where this one is found. See what stirs and inspires you as a new horizon is painted for you. Inspiring movies and music do this for me, too.

Beginnings and Endings
Every sunrise and sunset is both a beginning and ending. Every horizon represents going and coming. Where you have been becomes a horizon. Is that past a place you never want to look back on or visit again, or is it a horizon of endearment? Either way, it can be a horizon of learning.

A horizon is a line of demarcation where change happens. Change means going from one thing to another, which means something is probably ending and something is beginning. Depending on the situation and the kind of person you are, that “walking into the sunset” moment can be miserable or magnificent.

What is the sun setting on in your world? Is there something that needs to be closed out like it is a day coming to an end? Maybe the sunset on something in the past that you need for it to rise on again because it was a time of daylight for you and will help you begin again.

What is the sun rising on? What are you approaching? As you look to the horizon of next year, what is beginning? Don’t let any voices of fear keep you from looking out to that horizon! Hop into your dream car and drive there! Dream of it, draw it out, design what you see, and describe it clearly. 

Times and Seasons
Horizons are often determined by times and seasons. The earth’s horizons shift as the hours pass and one season rolls into the next. Life’s horizons look very different as a granddaddy to eight than as a young dad to four. Seasons of life shift your horizons. That means some things may not be visible right now, but your life will rotate and revolve, and your views will change.

If you are in a new season of life, have you explored the horizons, or have you assumed they are all the same? No sunset or sunrise is the same, ever. Your community needs you in this season of your life, and you have new offers to make because your life has shifted. That may also be true of a nonprofit. If you keep looking for an old horizon and it’s not there, adjust to what is in front of you.

These rhythms of life are significant to our decision-making and vision development. I’ve written another blog called Rhythms, which explores the importance of these paces and patterns in our lives. I encourage you to grow to love the rhythms of life and the new horizons that emerge. You’ll be less stressed, and so will those around you.

One final note on times and seasons. There is power in looking back to understand just how far you have come. Knowing the distance you have traversed and all you have accomplished can cause the horizons in front of you to seem more plausible. You can because you have.

Choices and Opportunities
One summer, I sat on a large rock jetty journaling at the Ocean City, New Jersey beach. While ocean waves crashed all around me, I experienced three different horizons. On one horizon, the sun was setting; on another, the moon sat, and on the third, dark storm clouds with frequent bolts of lightning emerged from them toward the ocean.

If you prefer a different horizon to contemplate, turn and look to another and see what it offers you. Perspective can change things. Your perspective is based on the angle from which you are viewing things. Right now, shift where you are sitting or standing to another place and angle. You see, you have choices that can further your opportunities because you see them now.

The horizon views provided to you by the earth alone are 360^o of options. If you look into your future, believing you have no choices, you will probably find none. That’s true for you and the community you serve. Communities and their people often act like they have no choices or opportunities, so they never see the panorama of options surrounding them.

Lift your eyes, turn your head, move your feet, and find another horizon if necessary.

Anticipations and Aspirations
We know it is coming so we set ourselves up for its arrival or departure—the sun. No matter how many sunrises or sunsets we have seen, we anticipate a photo-worthy show that will move us.

As a new year approaches, there is anticipation of what is to come. We create parties around the countdown, anticipating the arrival of the horizon that we pass over from one year to the next.

Look up. Do you know where you are going? Keeping your nose constantly to the grindstone or your head down pushing without wavering against the enemy problem can lead to losing all sense and awareness of what is actually in front of you.

Keeping your head down can be a survival tactic to avoid being overwhelmed and to feel like you are successful. There are so many elements to the work of human services and community development. Sometimes, knowing where to invest the resources of time, energy, and money can be difficult. But what about aspirations?

Absent modern-day technology, a farmer plows a straight line using something on the horizon as a stable point. He then aligns the front of the tractor, maybe even a hood ornament like a gunsight, on that stable point on the horizon, enabling the farmer to plow straight lines. What if you did the same, making the landmark on the horizon what you aspire to reach?

Horizons are always there, whether we see them or not. Look up from the ground and the grind and do some horizon exploring.

Action Points

• Look up.
• Turn around to look at another horizon for a fresh view if you need to.
• Schedule some time to sit where an inspiring horizon is in full view. Bring a journal and pen to take notes as you consider the 2025 horizon.
• Consider the two views of the horizon described in the introduction as you consider next year: sitting on a boulder or beach pondering the year’s horizon or driving in your dream car through the year from one month’s or season’s horizon to the next.

Do you desire to strengthen your CharityTracker or OasisInsight network to new levels of collaboration and impact? Reach out to Chuck today to schedule your conversation: chuck@simonsolutions.com. 

Dr. Chuck Coward serves as Community Impact Specialist for Simon Solutions, Inc. Chuck has invested over 35 years in fostering human and community development from a variety of places and roles, including as a pastor, non-profit Executive Director, Director of Development, businessman, consultant, university professor, The Struggle Coach, and the founder of Entrusted Foundation. Serving to make people and communities stronger is his great passion. Chuck is the proud husband to Anita, dad to four, and granddaddy to eight.