Man of Action, Man of Vision

I am not a man of action.

Oh, I know what people will say:  I am.  Yes, in the sense that there are a great many things that I will do, yes I am.  I have done things that I never would have contemplated years ago:  made cheese, practiced iaido, threw weights, grew a garden, ran races, played the harp, wrote some books.

But a man of action? In the classic sense of the word?  That hardly seems to fit my conception of myself.

When I think of men of action I think of the bold ones, the great ones, the ones who painted across the canvas of life with a broad brush, who change the conceptions of how we view entire technologies or ways of doing business or even something as simply as a cup of coffee.  These men hold a secret longing and aspiration in my heart.

Why?  Because they seem to exude self confidence, a sense of knowing their place in the world and where they are heading to.  They have a vision - be it a political system or the height of an art of a new way of doing business or even a fantastic way for impacting things for Christ - which they use a a motive power both to fuel them and to guide their day to day actions.

I lack this vision, this self confidence, this guiding inner picture of what it is I am here to do and how I am to accomplish it.  Instead I seem to lurch from side to side, taking in a project here, dabbling in something there, but never really using these interests in a grander sense of moving towards it: the thing, the goal, the vision.

How does one acquire such a thing?  Is it something one is born with?  Is it something that magically comes to one in the night?  Is it hours of reflection and meditation?  Or is it simply in a blinding flash of serendipity, the bolt from the blue that makes is sit upright?

I wish I knew.   All I do know is that I feel as if I am continuing to chase my tail while the richness and greatness of what is possible rolls by me like waves, bearing others up on the surf even as I simply float along.