Time and again I am surprised by the richness and diversity of their responses. The random images seem to stimulate their meaning making and encourage them to break out of familiar ways of thinking. […] In the words of Bateson […], Without the random there can be no new thing.*
(Daphne Loads)

I thought to read even more randomly as I journaled this morning.

I’d read Daphne Loads’ words on randomness yesterday and made sure to include them.

A dozen or so sources later, I’d reflected on the behaviour of a particular crowd story that had perplexed me for many years …

pondered reconstituting a creative community I have missed since its final event some years ago …

wondered about how the different experiences we go through temper or “voice,” and how to bring this into my work …

thought about how to connect mindful doodling more with this …

considered how the mundane things in our days may be transformed into meaningful games of possibility, allowing us to stay in our flow …

topped off with how the random meetings with people and what’s important to them can create spaces of possibility, and a universe of abundance rather than a world of scarcity.

Would it have mattered if I had not got anything from my random wanderings? I don’t think so.

As long as I trust openness and unhurriedness to provide more:

The least strained and most natural ways of the soul are the most beautiful, the best occupations are the least forced.**

This for all of us; why not find your randomness.

(*From Daphne Loads’ Rich Pickings, quoting Gregory Bateson.)
(**Michel de Montaigne, quoted in Gretchen Ruben’s The Happiness Project.)