Twyla Tharp’s habitual routine for finding a good idea for her art: ‘I’m digging through everything to find something.’*

Scratching is also a way of understanding how we shape our stories about life.  And, have you noticed, we are the protagonists and never the antagonists in our stories.

Psychologist Cordelia Fine has called the idea of self-knowledge, a “farce” and an “agreeable fiction.”**

Philosopher William Hirstein proffers how our positive illusions keep us from despair because, “The truth is depressing.  We are going to die, … we are tiny insignificant dots on a tiny planet.  Perhaps with the advent of broad intelligence and foresight comes the need for … self-deception to keep depression and its consequent lethargy at bay.”*

We prefer to stay in the Matrix: “You take the blue pill – the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe.”^

There’s another story here, one greater than we can handle.  We are also a vast universe’s expression of consciousness, imagination, and creativity.

Back in 1963, neo-futurist Buckminster Fuller asked, “How big can we think?”^^  The creator of the term “Spaceship Earth.” Fuller could see how our thinking threatened our very existence in a cold and dangerous universe, but also hoped we could think bigger still.

Thinking bigger involves increasing our awareness, which helps us to see ourselves in perspective.  Part of thinking bigger, then, involves thinking smaller, understanding our meaning and place:

‘If you are content with being nobody in particular, content not to stand out, you align yourself with the power of the universe.’*^

To look into the life of another, out into the universe, and into god – if you have one – is to see ourselves: ‘You … have become still enough inside to notice the vastness in which these countless worlds exist.’*^

The five elemental truths help us to begin life:
Life is hard …
You are not as special as you think …
Your life is not about you …
You are not in control …
You are going to die …

Your life is about completing each of these in a way which brings love and beauty and hope into the world in the way only you can.

(*From Twyla Tharp’s The Creative Habit.)
(**Quoted in Jonathan Gottschall’s The Storytelling Animal.)
(^The character Morpheus in the movie The Matrix.)
(^^Quoted in Peter Senge’s The Necessary Revolution.)
(*^From Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth.)