Society wants us to live a planned existence, following paths that have been travelled by others. Tried and true. The known, the expected, the controlled, the safe. The path of the wanderer is not this! The path of the wanderer is an experiment with the unknown. To idle. To daydream.*
(The Wander Society)

But complexity consists of integration as well as differentiation. The task of the next decades and centuries is to realise this underdeveloped component of the mind. Just as we have learned to separate ourselves from each other and the environment, we now need to learn how to reunite ourselves with other entities around is without losing our hard-won individuality.**
(Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi)

The maxim points
out the well-trodden way:

One must work,
nothing but work,
and one must have patience.^

We stare in our
independence but nothing comes;

Perhaps if we stop doing,
if we wander away
to speak to another or enjoy the earth,

We will find the thought we seek,
Our feet treading an interdependent path.

(*The Wander Society, quoted in Keri Smith’s The Wander Society.)
(**From Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow.)
(^Quoted in Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters on Life.)

The artist needs to know how to lose the plot – how to not care and how to not know – and how to actually enjoy that freedom and understand what a blessed revitalising state all of that mess can be.*
(Michael Leunig)

the goal is to end up […] “lost in the woods” with a creative challenge or a problem that needs solving**
(Warren Berger)

The straight line
will take me there
quickly
but perhaps not richly,

so I will take
a slower way
into a messy fullness.

(*From Michael Leunig’s post: Regressive Painting and the Holy Fool.)
(**From Warren Berger’s Glimmer.)

Most innovative projects […] tend to begin with someone venturing out into the world, looking around, and noticing a problem or need.*
(Warren Berger)

And what if
you have all you need;

Not needing to wait for someone
else to make that dent in the world?

(*From Warren Berger’s Glimmer.)

We must face the fact that we have a responsibility to own what’s possible. Opportunity abounds. And that’s both a scary and a comforting thought.*
(Bernadette Jiwa)

“To learn” therefore means at root – at route – “to follow a track.”**
(Robert Macfarlane)

Remain curious in following the path
that may become hidden to you;
beyond is where the possibilities lie.

Aim not to say,
you have no time for this,
for in that moment, the emerging may be lost.

(*From Bernadette Jiwa’s The Story of Telling blog: The Bounds of Possibility.)
(**From Robert Macfarlane’s The Old Ways: from the proto-Germanic liznojan.)

The meaning of life is meaning: whatever it is, wherever it comes from, a unified purpose is what gives meaning to life.*
(Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi)

1. Design your immediate surroundings (your ecosystem) in a manner that is self-sustaining and conducive to growth.
2. Develop a strong, supportive relationship with the community around you.
3. Keep learning.
4. Keep creating and reinventing.**
   (Warren Berger)

Changelessness in a physical or material universe is an illusion.

We will need to keep reorientating our lives towards meaningfulness and away from meaninglessness.

This happens best through design, the most successful individuals and groups of people not only being most adaptive to changing conditions but also designing the conditions in which they will grow most.

(*From Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow.)
(**From Warren Berger’s Glimmer.)

In their intense meditation the hidden sound of things approaching reaches them and they listen reverently while in the street outside the people hear nothing at all.*
(Nassim Taleb)

Please,

Save me from
my wandering with no purpose,

Dissuade me from
my gazing into I don’t know where,

Put me off
times alone in wondering,

Prevent me from
falling into silence away from all that busily presses in,

Protect me from
noticing the richness that fills each moment and space –

Else I may discover
my curiosity and imagination,

Hear the hidden things
and see all that can be,

Woe betides if
I recover my energy, within,

Reinspire my work without
and be be fully present with whoever, doing whatever.

Please, I pray,
Keep me to this narrow way I bemoan each day.

(*From Nassim Taleb’s Fooled by Randomness, reflecting on those who are wise.)

I’m finding my way and choosing my path on this incredible journey. I have Big dreams. I see possibility. I have endless curiosity. I make discoveries. I have a feeling of wonder.*
(Susan Verde)

We are all haunted by something deep inside of us, and often, a lot of our best work is the result of yes trying to come to terms with this.**
(Hugh Macleod)

The seed asks, “Is this me?”

and then becomes a shoot.

The shoot asks, “Is this me?”

and then becomes a stalk

The stalk asks, “Is this me?”

and then becomes a head.

The head asks, “Is this me?”

and then becomes a kernel.

The kernel asks, “Is this me? …

(*From Susan Verde and Peter Reynolds’ I Am Human.)
(**From gapingvoid’s blog: Spiritual redemption.)

Give and you will
always have more to give.

What kind of law
is this?

Drawing from the deepest places
things you can never empty.

From deep depths of character
and talent

Expressed time, friendship,
Compassion,

A true Self
to which there is no end

To give is only to deepen,
Eyes enabled wide to see more,

Always becoming more than
you now know yourself to be –

Giving invites who
you can be tomorrow.

(*Rainer Maria Rilke, quoted in John O’Donohue’s To Bless the Space Between Us: to be here is immense.)

If you’re blessed with imagination, it’s part of your job to bring better images to the world.*
(Austin Kleon)

Imagination is like a muscle. The more you use it, the stronger and more expansive it becomes.

We’re helped to forget at a young age that we all have imaginations – you may have noticed that it isn’t taught in school.

If you can create a picture in your mind you have imagination. In fact, it likely that you use it hundreds of times a day for everyday things, l such as going shopping (what picture just flashed into your mind?).

It just needs to be used for more than the everyday. A good place to begin is with your curiosity. Notice it, wander around it, wander wherever it leads …

Before you know it, you’re a recovering unimaginative.

(*From Austin Kleon’s blog: How to talk to someone with a missing imagination.)

Art isn’t only a painting. Art is anything that’s creative, passionate, and personal. An artist is someone who uses bravery, insight, creativity, and boldness to challenge the status quo. Art is a personal gift that changes the recipient. The medium doesn’t matter. The intent does. Art is a personal act of courage, something one human does that creates change in another.*
(Seth Godin)

Ultimately the goal is to have everyone in the company begin to think like a designer: to question traditional practices and ways of doing things to envision new possibilities, to be able to express and share those ideas, to collaborate within teams and begin turning the ideas into realities.**
(Warren Berger)

These two quotes don’t use the word ritual but in reality they are jam-packed full of them.

Artists and designers shake up the way things are with their imaginations – and we’re all artists and designers. Those imaginative possibilities need vessels to bring them into reality: rituals.

It’s the necessary thing I am becoming more and more aware of when it comes to the work I engage in with people towards identifying and developing their talents and abilities.

(By the way, this is something I am trying to make available to those who are being made redundant as they come to the end of the furlough scheme – please share with anyone you know kin this position, especially the young.)

Rituals help us to get things done, imagination keeps these fresh through introducing the new. Jordan Peterson captures it well here:

Meaning is the ultimate balance between, on the one hand, the chaos of transformation and possibility and on the other, the discipline of pristine order, whose purpose is to produce out of the attendant chaos a new order that will be even more immaculate, and capable of bringing forth a still more balanced and productive chaos and order. Meaning is the Way, the path more abundant, the place you live when you are guided by Love and speaking Truth and when nothing you want or could possibly want takes any precedence over precisely that. Do what is meaningful, not what is expedient.^

I’ve lost count of the number of times I have come across this same idea – Christian Schwarz‘s dynamic and static poles, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi‘s need to explore and need to be secure, and Friedrich Schiller‘s material and formal urges being just three.

These rituals will be different for each of us – the best are those we create for ourselves – but each will have within them the danger of turning stolid. This is why we always need to be feeding our imaginations, but imagination without ritual lacks corporality and too much of that will only leave us jaded.

You’ll have rituals that you’ve introduced to your life that are there because they worked. Name them and shake them up with a little imagination. See how different even a small change will leave you feeling and you’re back with what is most meaningful to you, the art and design you want to bring into the world.

(*Seth Godin, quoted in Ben Hardy’s article These 20 Pictures Will Teach You More Than Reading 100 Books.)
(**From Warren Berger’s Glimmer.)
(^From Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life.)