we are diminished, and we forget that we are more than we know*
Madeleine L’Engle

A jack of all trades is a master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of one.**
David Epstein

When we accept that we are
diminished and more than we know,
we place ourselves within a powerful and
dynamic tension,
Positioning ourselves serendipitously within
a diminished and more than we know world:
Our success has a lot to do
with how we dance with conditions
that aren’t quite perfect.^

This is our humble confession,
The first of three critical Cs –
Confession not about the bad but
the good.

*Madeleine L’Engle’s Walking on Water;
David Epstein’s Range;
^Seth Godin’s blog: The perfect conditions.

To be someone, as an artist, means: to be able to speak to one’s self. … For everything that is unique to an individual, if it does not wish to remain silent, needs its proper language … To say the same with the same words does not constitute progress.*
Rainer Maria Rilke

Sometimes the words others use just
aren’t the right ones for us –
Example:
My work includes elements of
coaching and mentoring, but
I am not a coach and
I am not a mentor;
I needed to find the word
dreamwhisperer to open a door into
the work I love.

I share these things because
I suspect it will be the same for you:
Play with your words,
Find your language.

Note forward:
I am not a spiritual director,
Though I recognise there are elements of
directing in the work that I do, so
I am finding new words for
a new development:
In Irish it is cogar anam:
Soul whisperer –
More to follow.

*Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters On Life.

Plot-driven stories put major turning points, especially the inciting incident, beyond the character’s control. … Character driven stories do the opposite. They put major events in the character’s hands.*
Robert McKee

When language becomes exhausted, our freedom dwindles – we cannot think; we do not recognise danger, injustice strikes us no more than “the ways things are.”**
Madeleine L’Engle

Our lives are full of
both plot-driven and
character-driven stories;
Most important, then, is the
development of those qualities and
characteristics that allow us to
respond and pre-spond
in the most hopeful ways:
Talents,
Energies,
Values:
It’s the work I love
helping people with –
There’s always so much to discover.

*Robert McKee’s Character;
**Madeleine L’Engle’s Walking on Water.

Firstly, creativity thrives on isolation and disconnection. Second, creativity flourishes in marginal spaces and liminal spaces. Finally, creativity thrives on chaos.*
Oliver Burkeman

From the disparity between the immensity of the possible and the smallness of the human being there springs the torment and the energy of the flâneur. Persecuted by frustration, he is sentenced to a sort of perpetual motion.**
Frederico Castigliano

Absence makes the
imagination grow stronger,
Disappearing us into the unnoticed and
unexplored places, ideas, and lives that
both grows the Self and
possibility:
First we have to persuade ourselves
we can make make pigs fly;
only then do we have a chance of
helping them fly.^

The flâneur and flâneuse
show us the way.

*Oliver Burkeman’s Life Is In the Transitions;
**Frederico Castigliano’s Flâneur;
^Oliver Burkeman’s Life Is In the Transitions, reflecting upon John Steinbeck’s “Pigasus” logo.

Which is better? Feeling like you were right the first time or actually being correct now?*
Seth Godin

Talent is insignificant. I know a lot of talented ruins. Beyond talent lie all the usual words: discipline, love, luck, but most of all, endurance.**
James Baldwin

Talent isn’t insignificant, but
it is overrated;
It requires all of
James Baldwin’s other words to
be fully activated and become
the correct answer our lives can be –
Our lives are rarely the first answer
we come up with.

*Seth Godin’s blog: The right answer;
**Bruce Feiler’s Life Is In the Transitions.

Movement gets us unstuck. It restores agency by giving us a feeling we’re acting on our situation.*
Bruce Feiler

although it may appear paradoxical, in order to acquire a profound view of things, you must first of all move randomly**
Federico Castigliano

When stuck,
Don’t stay where you are,
Don’t try and double-down on forced focus –
Move,
Wander,
Discover,
Imagine,
Create, and then,
Return.

*Bruce Feiler’s Life Is In the Transitions;
**Federico Castigliano’s Flâneur.

The fairy godmother replied that true magic is to help each thing become it’s best and most free self.*
Rebecca Solnit

A daemon is a calling, obsession, a source of lasting and sometimes manic energy. … when you are looking for a vocation, you are looking for a daemon. … You are trying to find that tension or problem that arouses great waves of moral, spiritual and relational energy.**
David Brooks

To become our best self –
Our True Self –
It is highly likely that
we will need to identify a cause:
Not any old cause,
Not someone else’s cause,
But one that is deeply personal
and will make the world better.

*Rebecca Solnit’s Cinderella Liberator;
**David Brooks’ The Second Mountain.

It may not be god for you,
It may be the universe,
But to know that our time here has
made a difference for someone, somewhere,
and this, as it were,
Has been noticed by someone or something
greater than us
matters.

There is not better place to
uncover this than in the
stillness and silence
That the universe
or god
supply to us in
extravagant amounts.

Out of our stillness and knowing,
We understand that we have much to share that
others need,
And others have much to share that
we need.

Be still and know.

To know our past,
Know our Future,
know our present.