Now all that is needed is more. More time. More cycles, more bravery, more process. More of you. Much more of you, More idiosyncrasy, more genre, more seeing, more generosity. More learning. It’s not working. (Yet.)*
(Seth Godin)

We know we are alive but there are those moments that leave us feeling even more alive.

It’s as though we have woken up and before we were only drowsing.

What if tomorrow holds the possibility of being even more awake? Perhaps today, we are only dreaming of being awake.

How to awaken ourselves. Wendell Berry has written about his relationship with a physical place, but could well be writing about the life we each inhabit:

I had made a significant change in my relation to the place: before, it had been mine by coincidence or accident; now it was mine by choice. My return, which at first had been hesitant and tentative, grew wholehearted and sure. I had come back to stay.**

The first response feels dulled, the second, quickened.

There’s a place in the apostle Paul’s letter to the Philippian believers where he encourages them to ‘work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.’^ His words not unfamiliar, this time they felt charged with an excited alertness: about choosing to live as fully as possible. The same sense is found in James Carse’s comparison of a theatrical life with a dramatic life. What we are then seeking to release is genius:

Theatrically, my birth is an event of potted repetition.  I am born as another member of my family and culture.  Who I am is a question already answered by the content and character of a tradition.  Dramatically, my birth is the rupture of the repetitive sequence, an event certain to change what the past has meant.  In this case the character of a tradition is determined by who I am.  Dramatically speaking, every birth is the birth of genius.^^

As Nassim Taleb has pointed out, there’s only one thing better than skin in the game and that is soul in the game – aliveness in every part of our being.

I do not feel I am there (yet), but I aim to turn up each day in the process that is shaped by my values, talents and energies. Watch out for more information about an online meetup I’ll be hosting and you can be a part of.

(*From Seth Godin’s The Practice.)
(**Wendell Berry, quoted in Austin Kleon’s blog: My relation to the place.)
(^Philippians 2:12)
(^^From James Carse’s Finite and Infinite Games.)