Human beings at their best are givers of gifts.** David Brooks
noblesse oblige; the very status of a lord has been traditionally derived from protecting others, trading personal risk for prominence^ Nassim Taleb
There is a connection as powerful as life itself between exploring the inner life and sharing what we find with others:
It’s the same inward journey we’ve seen before: the plunge inward and then the expansion outward.**
We’ll know when we have found the most meaningful thing to us – We will want to make it available to others in some way shape or form: To enrich their lives in some way.
When asked the question What does it mean to me to be human? I felt it was to live with Creativity, Generosity, Enjoyment – The last part being dependent on the first two; I’d love to hear your reply.
The only essential is this: the gift must always move.* Lewis Hyde
The person going through the experience has to choose to convert the change and upheaval into transition and renewal.** Bruce Feiler
These two essentials for our growth and development, Are the reason it is so difficult to measure our potential: We are open to the love and knowledge others share with us, And we also have the capacity to generate them despite the challenges of life or sometimes because of them.
Men are born soft and supple; dead, they are stiff and hard. Plants are born tender and pliant; dead, they are brittle and dry. Thus whoever is stiff and inflexible is a disciple of death. Whoever is soft and yielding is a disciple of life. The hard and stiff will be broken. The soft and supple will prevail. Lao Tzu
Between the old and the new lies the messy middle.
I borrow the phrase from Bruce Feiler,** An accurate term when I recall the three times I was voted and and had to move on from a role, Though not for the best part of a year three times over, And also the time I decided to leave a role myself and the two years this was to take.
Determined to use the messy middle in order to grow and develop, My journal accompanied me for much of this; I didn’t journal or read much when it happened the first time, And the difference for becoming a reader and having my journal for the other times was significant:
Writing in your journal is more powerful than simple meditation for the same reason that writing your goals down is more powerful than leaving them in your head.^
From a certain angle, It feels as if all of these transitions meld into a messy middle, And every day I am exploring towards the something new.
This morning, I found myself pondering the “what ifs” of staying instead of having to move, Or moving in a different direction to the one that I have.
There is something inside that assures me that each of these would have been a good life, But this one, Born of all the messiness, is best, And for this I am grateful, Each of these posts being an expression of my gratitude, Today’s being number 3,219.
A transition is an adhesive and a healer. It takes something broken and begins to repair it. It takes something shaken and helps steady it. It takes something shapeless and starts to give it shape.**
[A man] doesn’t always know himself what he could do, but he feels by instinct, I’m good for something, even so! … I know that I cold be quite a different man! … There’s something within me, so what is it!* Vincent van Gogh
We see our turning points as a matter of life and death.** Bruce Feiler
Something has changed.
I am nowhere near where I thought I would be, Forty or thirty or even twenty years ago.
I think I’m coming to know what I am good for.
Not the result of a single once-and-for-all decision.
When I look back, I see there have been so many moments of letting go and letting die, Many times one leading to another until I am good for something.
Each of us is responsible for finding our own meaning to live.* Bruce Feiler
Thou shalt create complex characters rather than merely complicated story.** Robert McKee
In breaking down his reflection on the work of Viktor Frankl – How we do not ask Life what its meaning is, But Life asks us – Bruce Feiler offers an ABC for shaping meaning: A is for Agency, B is for Belonging, C is for Cause.
The most meaningful stories contain all of these, Though we are likely to prioritise, And in doing so, Our story deepens:
When you commit you deepen presence. Though your choice narrows the range of possibility now open to you, it increases the intensity of chosen possibility.^
I am reminded of the 3 Cs: Confession is for expressing the deepest and best truths about ourselves – And will be marked by growing humility, gratitude and faithfulness; Communion is for relating to others, our world and our god – And will be marked by growing integrity, wholeness and perseverance; Commission is for serving a purpose greater than ourselves – And will be marked by growing courage, generosity and wisdom.
My growing understanding is that our lives are trying to call us towards the kind of complexity Robert McKee suggests we need, So that if we were able to step outside all the noise and the rush, Even for a short while, We might begin to hear the whisperings of our lives and begin or continue to create our meaningful stories:
The ancient myths were designed to harmonise the mind and body. The mind can ramble off in strange ways and want things that the body does not want.^^
But to be what I am, to live what I was meant to live, to want to sound like no one else, to yield the blossoms dictated by my heart: this is what I want and surely this cannot be arrogance.* Rainer Maria Rilke
In a truly open-world problem devoid of rigid rules and reams of perfect historical data, AI has been disastrous.** David Epstein
We need to watch over one another’s creativities; We do not know what problem they may one day solve or what need they may meet.
There may have been many twists and turns necessary to finding our peculiar creativities, But when we look back, Perhaps look like a singular bow of elegant solutions.
You enter in one place, go through an elaborate squiggle, then come out in another.* Lev Sviridov
If you follow your heart’s passion – AKA dream calling vocation bliss purpose element path – Then you will be a disruptor.
I appreciate that some live disruptive lives in a harmful way, But you are going to use your disruption for the good, The critical, The life-changing, And if I can help you find your disruption then let me know.
Nonlinearliity means that the act of playing the game has a way of changing the rules.* James Gleick
In wicked domains the rules of the game are often unclear or incomplete, there may not be repetitive patterns and they may not be obvious, and feedback is often delayed, inaccurate, or both. In the most devilishly wicked learning environments, experience will reinforce the exact wrong lessons.** David Epstein
Today, there’ll be many small “happenings” that will change our day many times over.
Many of these won’t even be noticed by us: A message we hadn’t anticipated receiving, Someone calls by to have a word, We hear an idea that engages us for the rest of the day.
We’re so used to them, But they are what Bruce Feiler labels disruptors.
There are larger ones of course, Feiler offering five headings: Love, Identity, Belief, Work, Body* – There’s something here for each of us. We may try to tidy up the chaotic nature of existence, Imposing upon it some way of understanding and controlling that will work for a while, Until it doesn’t – I know I do – But the best way forward Is to engage, To play the game.
We each have preferred ways for doing this, Ways we have developed in response to all the disruptions we have experienced in your lives: The talents and abilities that make it possible for us to play the infinite game.
interesting work starts with interesting thinking … and thinking is out reliably spurred by walking* Oliver Burkeman
Bruce Feiler outlines how life has been seen differently through the ages: The circle of life, The stages of life, The linear life.
Life is more dynamic and more complex then any of these paradigms allow – Though I realise, When it comes to the work that I do, I take something from each, Perhaps because they all contain valuable and, therefore, Helpful insights.
Put them together, And more, And perhaps you have a doodle paradigm, From dawdling, A way of walking that is full of noticing.
Something’s going on. No one knows how to tell their story anymore. I’ve got to figure out how to help. … Conflict is the one precondition of a story. For there to be a narrative at all, something unforeseen must happen.** Bruce Feiler
Memorisation is brittle. Metaphor scales. Metaphor helps us create the next thing and find our footing when confronted with the new.^ Seth Godin
Have we forgotten what we want to live our lives for? It seems ridiculous. How can we forget our lives? And yet, That’s what it can feel like on a daily basis, When the noise and busyness encircles and overwhelms – And there’s ever more noise and busyness:
life is filled with chaos and complexity, periods of order and disorder, linearity and nonlinearity … loops, spirals, wobbles, fractals, twists, tangles and turnabouts*.
Bruce Feiler is arguing that the linear life is gone so welcome to the nonlinear – no more What is it I’m supposed to do now? My antidote to forgetfulness Is to imagine our lives as unfolding stories, To be visited at the beginning of each day (wherever possible), Helping us to remember, We’re wanting to bring our deepest gladness^ into the gift of a new day.
THIN|SILENCE 
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