This morning, I enjoyed blue skies with birds wheeling through the air, heard pigeons cooing and crows crawking.  I am part of this and it is good.

My life now seems so small.  It is passing so quickly and I want it to be enjoyable – which means I must live with creativity and generosity.

These three words – creativity, generosity, enjoyment – emerged for me when my friend Alex asked, What does it mean to be human?  This question also prompts me to name the five elemental truths.  To be human means that life is hard; we are not as special as we think, our lives are not about us, we are not in control, and we are going to die.*

I think of these as half sentences, though, inviting us to complete them.

Life is hard, but together we can make it create something full of meaning, or,

You’re not as special as you think, but you have something rare and beautiful to contribute.

Not so much about “this is how it is,” they’re anchors from which to move into adventures.  Adventures don’t have to take us to the other side of the world, but they do take us out of the ordinary.  Into something challenging and stretching.  (I am realising my challenge to doodle every day, seeing where this goes, is satisfying my love for colour.  And colour is everywhere and in everyone.

It’s time to #getcolouring.

I feel the possibility of things.  Possibility that is wide open and not prescriptive.

‘In infinite play, one chooses to be mortal inasmuch as one always plays dramatically, that is, toward the open, toward the horizon, toward surprise, where nothing can be scripted.’**

We are drama-people, not theatre-people.  Drama is unscripted and open; theatre is the opposite – you know just where it will end.  It’s in the script.

Drama people are tipping point people:

‘[T]he very idea of a tipping point centres on the long term impact of relatively small groups adopting new ideas and behaviours.’^

Such groups know that no one person knows everything, and they honour the hiddenness of things – the result of complexity with all its ifs, buts and maybes.  This is reshaping how we think about leadership: infinite games inviting everyone to contribute.

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?”^

(*Richard Rohr identifies these five “truths” from male initiation rites from  around the world, in Adam’s Return.)
(**From James Carse’s Finite and Infinite Games.)
(^From Peter Senge’s The Necessary Revolution.)
(^^Mary Oliver, quoted in Mindfullybeing’s Mindfulness.)