Life-as-Fate: If your character looks backward, rarely forward, she may feel trapped in a fate not her own. … Life-as-Destiny: If your character looks forward, rarely backward, she lives life on her own terms, freely choosing her own path.*
Robert McKee

Men wanted for hazardous journey, small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful, honour and recognition in case of success.**
Ernest Shackleton

Allegedly, Ernest Shackleton printed
this ad in a newspaper, and had more than
five thousand applicants;
Perhaps a desire on their part to
move out of the soul-numbing into
the life-tingling,
To move themselves out of fate and
into destiny:
To prove they were alive.

This desire to pursue destiny is strong
within each of us, and one place
to begin – not thousands of miles away –
Is within,
Entered through quietness and attention:
In that special silence,
you get a strong sense of something
that wants to happen that you would be
unaware of otherwise.^

When Darth Vader delivered the line on destiny
to his son, he had got it wrong,
He was talking about fate, but Luke chose
destiny.

*Robert McKee’s Character;
**Maria Popova’s Figuring;
^Joseph Jaworski, from Peter Senge, Otto Scharmer, Jospeh Jaworski, and Betty Sue Flowers’ Presence.

What is your thread?*
William Sieghart

Life is an expression of bliss.**
Joseph Campbell

Thread and bliss are two more words to
add to the list of
dream
purpose
meaning
must
element
calling
vocation –
The word doesn’t matter as much as
the question:
There’s a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn’t change.^

*William Sieghart’s The Poetry Pharmacy;
**Joseph Campbell’s Pathways to Bliss;
^From William Stafford’s The Way It Is; The Poetry Pharmacy.

The composting metaphor suggests that mystical awe follows a pattern of decay, distilling and growth.*
Dacher Keltner

Every move an infinite player makes is towards the horizon. Every move made by a finite player is within a boundary. Every moment of an infinite game therefore presents a new range of possibilities.**
James Carse

Perhaps there is an
idea, a
thought, a
theory, a
belief, a
paradigm that
needs to be removed
from it’s hermetic casing so that
it might rot and
drip its way towards
feeding a new possibility

*Dacher Keltner’s Awe;
**James Carse’s Finite and Infinite Games.

We are all equal in awe.*
Dacher Keltner

School and work push us to avoid real dreams. Dreamers are dangerous, impatient and unwilling to tolerate the status quo. Existing systems would prefer we simply fit in. The dreams we need to teach are the dreams of self-reliance and generosity. The only way for us to move forward is to encourage and amplify the work of people who are willing to learn, to see and to commit to making things better.**
Seth Godin

When we realise that awe
is something we all have to increase and develop – and
likely in our own quite specific ways –
We open up possibility and better.

*Dacher Keltner’s Awe;
**Seth Godin’s blog: Our dreaming opportunity.

I am only interested in everything.*
Les Murray

Awe-based visual design enables us to see the world through awe, locating our individual selves within larger patterns of interdependence.**
Dacher Keltner

It’s still all there, waiting
for you and me.

*Roger Deakin’s Waterlog;
**Dacher Keltner’s Awe.

And actually every human being is the hero of a drama … . Here is a person born with certain gifts, and usually fails, and his life is tremendous struggle to make something out of which he is born with; fighting against tremendous handicaps.**
Erich Fromm

When we finally get the hang of
the gifts and
failures and
limitations of our lives, something
amazing occurs – and,
Of course,
We never really get the hang of it, but,
That’s where the alchemy happens.

*The Incredibles;
*Erich Fromm’s The Art of Listening.

Peace to you;
Peace to every child, every
woman, every man,
Everyone.

Maybe ours is not the
leading role;
Perhaps we do our best work in
enabling others.

Genius is inseparable from the creative process. The word “genius” is expressive of the capacity to be generative. The genius gives birth to something new. The genius creates. … The genius speaks the future into existence.**
Erwin McManus

The myths, when they are translated into rites, organise the field.^
Joseph Campbell

There is something each of us that
our lives want to give expression to –
Something that feeds us with energy when we
engage.

My joy is to help people identify and
organise their genius;
I have a few spaces available
for the beginning of 2024, and
I will share a little more after Christmas:
Watch this space.

*David Shenk’s The Genius In All of Us;
**Erwin McManus’ The Genius of Jesus;
^Joseph Campbell’s The Hero’s Journey.

The drive for equilibrium becomes a character’s super-objective.*
Robert McKee

It turns out the acute angles, rough edges and the imperfect matches of diversity actually work better. Especially when you’re dealing with a human.**
Seth Godin

It’s there in so many stories:
The protagonist finds herself in
a challenging, unfamiliar world, and
all she wants to bring about is a
return to her known, predictable existence,
Only to find that she must play
this story out;
But it will be here that she will face her
demons and daemons, and
she will either die or
be reborn with
renewed sensitivity towards surprise and possibility.

*Robert McKee’s Character;
**Seth Godin’s blog: Cobbled together.