There are many difficult riches trapped in the shadow side. Jung said the shadow held 90 per cent gold.*
John O’Donohue

With vision above and reality at the base, creativity resides between the two.**
Kelvy Bird

I found myself exploring two themes this morning.

One: the need to do the creative bit in the middle, between reality and imagination.

Two: the need to get on with people by engaging the “gratitude tense“:

Don’t fight with people, study them.^

I wondered whether these themes might come together in some way?

Perhaps we imagine a different reality but we have to somehow give it form.

Unexpected others may be the best way into this creativity.

May we listen gratefully for as long as we are able.

*From John O’Donohue’s Divine Beauty;
**From Kelly Bird’s Generative Scribing;
^A slightly altered phrase from Austin Kleon’s advice for Thanksgiving “Don’t fight with your family., study them: A gratitude zine.

What if you had a whole day for whatever is your passion and joy?

Mine?

Firstly reading, journaling, writing.

Later, doodling, drawing.

Then dessert, conversation.

Yours?

Lisa Germany wanted to put on a photography exhibition. The result was “In My Backyard.”

The work of ten local photographers of Nuuk, Greenland, the only limitation was an extension of the backyard to 300 metres from their homes, vertically as well as horizontally.*

What if you were to engage in something similar?

What would you want me to see from your “backyard.”

Never one to miss a metaphor when it offers itself: what about the things from your life that you have come to appreciate over the years, though perhaps hadn’t at first?

How would you represent these?

A story, a picture, a doodle, a sculpture, a planting?

Ben Hardy offers five steps for making the shift from something missing in our lives – a gap – to something important – a gain:

1. Shift past meanings from Gap to Gain
2. Think of 1-3 Negative Pat Experiences
3. List all the benefits of these
4. Have a conversation between pas and future self
5. Change the past self’s identity narrative.*
   

*The project also encouraged Nuuk locals to participate with their own pictures.
**From Ben Hardy’s Personality Isn’t Permanent.

My past is working for me, not
Against me,
Not to me.
My constant companion,
I welcome some of what it shares
and regret others,
And yet it is
my teacher, guide, encourager
To live today well,
And where I don’t,
It will be there for me tomorrow,
My helper and loyal friend.

I know I am not the person I need to be,
Nor the person I could be –
there is still possibility, thankfully;
If I am willing to learn,
If I humble myself
before my teachers,
Today,
And again, tomorrow.

Writing well and reading well mean paying attention
to all the subtleties embodied in a sentence
In its exact form and no other.*
Verlyn Klinkenborg

Notice everything about your life.

Say it all to yourself and hear everything..

The pain as well as the joy,
The trauma as well as the triumphs:

Trauma in a variety of forms, is part of each of our lives. It includes any negative experience or incident that shapes who you are and how you operate in the world**

We may believe that to live our desirable life
there must be no shadow, no darkness.
Stephen Gilligan and Robert Dilts suggest that we not only carry a gift within us,
But also a woundedness.^

We are not only our gift,
We are not only our woundedness:

Works of art are born from the conflict of life. … Life is about the ultimate questions of finding love and self-worth, or bringing serenity to inner chaos, of the titanic social inequities everywhere around us, of time running out.^^

So we pay attention to all these subtleties
embodied in our lives,
Somehow creating from this unlikely mix
our lives-in-all-their-fullness.

*From Verlyn Klinkenborg’s Several Short Sentences About Writing;
**From Ben Hardy’s Personality Isn’t Permanent;
^From Stephen Gilligan and Robert Dilts’ The Hero’s Journey;
^^From Robert McKee‘s newsletter: The World According to Writers.

If a woman holds on to this gift of being old while she is young and young while she is old, she will always know what comes next.*
Clarissa Pinkola Estés

Pursue clarity … . In the pursuit of clarity, style reveals itself. Your clarity will differ from anyone else’s without your intention to make it differ.**
Verlyn Klinkenborg

When I was younger, I used to say that I was born old.

I was trying to live wisely and have enough discipline as a young man not to mess up (too often).

Now I’m old, my hope is to have enough vitality. Enough joy, too:

Now is the time to free the heart,
Let all intentions and worries stop,
Free the joy inside the self,
Awaken to the wonder of your life.^

May the discipline continue. To stay curious, explore some things deeply, keep talking with and learning from amazing people of all ages, try out some new things.

*From Clarissa Pinkola Estés’ Women Who Run With the Wolves;
**From Verlyn Klinkenborg’s Several short sentences about writing:
^From John O’Donohue’s Benedictus: For an Occasion of Celebration.

Hopefully, your future self will be far wiser and have a far wider range of experiences than your current self. Your future self will have greater opportunities, deeper relationships, and a better self-view. Hopefully your future self will have greater agency and choice that your current self, with more knowledge, skills and connections.*
Ben Hardy

All holiness is about learning to hear the voice of your own soul. It is always there and the more deeply you learn to listen, the greater the surprises and discoveries that will unfold. To enter into the gentleness of your own soul changes the tone and quality of your life. … The soul dwells where beauty lives.**
Seth Godin

Holiness as set-apartness.

Purpose.

So we listen deeply to our soul.

Imagining a future self beyond the current.

We may have a problem, though.

Remembering the present self.

Too old, wrong background, failure … .

It’s time to forget:

It’s an attempt to open our minds to possibilities other than the ones we remember, and the ones we already know we like.  Something has to be done to get us free of our memories and choices.^

So we enter unfamiliar spaces.

We name our values.

Haven’t done that before.

We uncover our talents.

Where did those come from?

We get out of our heads and into our bodies.

Noticing the energies.

This is hard.

Futures aren’t easy.

Unless you download more of the same.

*From Ben Hardy’s Personality Isn’t Permanent;
**From John O’Donohue’s Divine Beauty;
^John Cage, quoted in Lewis Hyde’s A Primer for Forgetting.

You’ll never run out of noticing … .*
Verlyn Klinkenborg

Noticing feeds choice.

We begin with reality.

Richard Sennett writes about how important resistance is to what we make:

We want to start with resistances, those facts that stand in the way of the will. Resistances themselves come in two forms: found and made.**

We will likely find some ideas nearby, like docks growing by nettles:

Ideas live in the world as we do. We discover certain ideas at certain times.^

Look around.

Avoiding reality and resistance may also mean missing ideas that offer a future we’d choose.

Not lifting it off some shelf.

Living it into existence.

*From Verlyn Klinkenborg’s Several short sentences about writing;
**From Richard Sennett’s The Craftsman;
^From M. C. Richards’ Centering.

The Chur Qiu Fan Lu […], written sometime in the second century BC, describes yellow as “the colour of rulers.”
Kassia St. Clair

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.**
Marcel Proust

There’s an infinite game afoot.

A game to include as many as possible for as long as possible.

You can wear yellow if you want.

I recommend it.

More importantly, you have already learned to read and write.

Something confined to the privileged not very long ago.

The privileged will always find something new to display.

But most of the life-changing things are now available to our creativity.

Time to play.

*From Kassia St. Clair’s The Secret Lives of Colour;
**Marcel Proust, quoted in Ben Hardy’s Personality Isn’t Permanent.