Last weekend I made a vision board, an activity I also partook in last year with a group of other ladies. Any time I told someone what I was doing on Sunday, I felt the need to hastily tack on “not that I’m a believer in The Secret or anything!”
And I’m not (I feel ornery about The Secret, but I have to admit I kind of sort of believe in a branch of magical thinking that could be described as the reverse, e.g. that if you worry enough about something highly specific happening, it WON’T, so I’m aware that that’s just the inverse…I’m also interested in the phenomenon of only getting a thing that you want when you stop pinning all of your hopes to it; again, somewhat the opposite of The Secret, which I guess I should also admit I haven’t read), but I’ve always felt that vision boards, tarot cards, and other talismans/crafts that have to do with The Future serve a function regardless, as Rorschach tests.
The phrase you often hear associated with psychics, palm readings, and tarot cards is “You hear what you want to hear” – which I think is great, not a shortcoming, because sometimes you don’t know what you want – or what you want to hear – until you hear it. You learn how you’ve been interpreting your life when you project its narrative onto the combination of cards that turn down for you, or choose the pictures from magazines that draw your attention and arrange them to form a story. Tarot cards and vision boards are ideal vessels for metaphor.
I also like making vision boards because I like to think about the various absurd ways the things depicted could indeed manifest themselves in the coming year, outside of however you may have intended them. Mine has some elephants. Some kayaks. Books. Last year I put two adorable babies, who happened to be wearing knit hats that looked like pandas, on my board and guess what?! Now I own two panda suits.
