“Civilisation occurs and maintains itself when the two forces – the striving and the ordering – approach equipoise.”*

Action and reflection make the most sublime things happen – we could substitute the word creativity for civilisation.

Paulo Coelho sees himself as a pilgrim when he avers:

“To live is to experience things, not sit around pondering the meaning of life … I can only speak to my soul when the two of us are off exploring deserts or cities or mountains or roads.’**  

This sounds very much like all action; perhaps Coelho doesn’t see how his writing is reflection.

More happens in journeying and reflecting, in striving and ordering.  Experience don’t come to us as big data but as small data.  When we see the bits and bytes of the world or a relationship or an idea or a practice, we can reconstruct these in an infinite number of new ways.

Or to put it another way …

Not long ago, most of us were data consumers.  Data is what happened to us or we found ourselves counted in, but now we are data producers.

It’s infectious.  When we identify our small data we can help others identify theirs.

(*Writer Clark Emery, quoted in Lewis Hyde’s The Gift.)
(**Paulo Coelho in Aleph.)