“If you want your dream to be
Take your time, go slowly”*

“Always keep Ithaca on your mind.
To arrive there is your ultimate goal.
But do not hurry the voyage at all.
It is better to let it last for many years;
and to anchor at the island when you are old,
rich with all you have gained on the way,
not expecting that Ithaca will offer you riches.”**

To see hope where others do not requires that we see slowly

Then new treasures appear along the slow road, to those who are prepared to live a slow presence – to dawdle.  I have often thought of my life as a slow journey in the same direction, yet have found myself busy with many things.

Last year, we moved into a new home.   We have waited for the Spring before working on the garden.  Gardens are another metaphor for life, for what life can produce – gardens cannot be grown quickly, natural laws attending to be attended to.

‘The person who rigorously maintains the clarity to stand confidently in the abundant universe of possibility creates an environment around him generative of certain kinds of conversations … inviting us to play in the meadows of the cooperative universe.’^

This journey explores more deeply than we had thought possible, this garden is rich in growing new possibilities, especially for others.  There are too many given up on by those who are in a hurry to move through life, to arrive at their Ithaca, unable to see many of the definitions and assumptions they are living by.

What we find for ourselves in these slow possibilities are the things which contribute to our own generativeness – specifically, I think, our integrity, wholeness, and perseverance.

Go slowly, noticing the things in which you are successful, act intuitively, grow as a result of, and, which meet your needs.  What you will find, then, is you’re creating possibilities for others.

(*Donovan Leith, quoted in the Northumbria Community’s Morning Prayer.)
(**Constantine Covafy’s Ithaca, quoted in Chris Guillebeau’s The Happiness of Pursuit.)
(^From Rosamund and Benjamin Zander’s The Art of Possibility.)