The work of significance embraces the very things that industrialism seeks to stamp out.*
Seth Godin

The beauty of a blessing always issues from a deeper place in time … The dream of prayer and art is to come nearer , even to slip through to dwell for a while in the vicinity of the essence.*
John O’Donohue

It’s not a catchy title, but
it is the important part of the brain when it comes to processing
information about the self;
What we feed the vmPFC is critical, though –
There’s a difference between a self-enhancing self (ego) and
a self-transcending self (true self),
And it is the latter that Viktor Frankl encourages us to nurture
when it comes to exploring the fullness and potential of our humanity –
The unfathomed depths we know exist within us,
The joy of our responsibility:
Only to the extent that someone is living out
this self-transcendence of human existence is he truly human
or does he become his true self.
He becomes so,
not be concerning himself with his self’s actualisation,
but by forgetting himself and
giving himself,
overlooking himself and
focusing outward.^

One more thing:
Writing things down really helps the vmPFC,
So journal on.

*Seth Godin’s The Song of Significance;
**John O’Donohue’s Divine Beauty;
^Victor Strecher’s Life on Purpose.

But that working within the limits of your moment in history, and your finite time and talents, you actually got round to doing – and made life more luminous for the rest of us by doing – whatever magnificent task or weird little thing it was you came here for.*
Oliver Burkeman

When we open ourselves to the world and pay homage to that which is larger than ourselves, we receive a blessing from the outer world. We get something back. We are ourselves enriched by the larger understanding of the cosmos and our place in it.**
Alan Lightman

I leave the magnificent task for others –
Maybe for you,
Mine is the weird little thing –
Small, bespoke, boutique;
Opening one’s self to the greater world is
a good place to begin,
To be able to notice what others do not and
to lean into what is more noticeable than other things –
And at first, we may not even know why,
But we must bring it into the world,
Not to everyone, but those who will know
it is for them.

*Oliver Burkeman’s Four Thousand Weeks;
**Alan Lightman’s The Transcendent Brain.

Dignity flows from agency, allowing us to be treated as humans, not cogs.*
Seth Godin

When people truly discover some aspect of their vision and have the opportunity to dedicate themselves to working on it, when they can tell the truth and focus on aspirations instead of on “being less bad,” when they can be themselves, then something changes.**
Peter Senge

Some know from an early age what they want to do with their lives,
Others come to what it is they must do later –
I wanted to be a hairdresser on leaving school, but only lasted three months;
A few years later,
I wanted to be a Methodist Church minister, and this lasted for decades,
But this wasn’t it, there was still something I wanted to be –
I didn’t know what it was and I didn’t have a name for it;
I have since come to call it dreamwhispering,
Because it’s about hearing and
uncovering the hopes and purpose people have for their lives –
It’s the small print to everything I write and doodle;
It’s not a cog-description, and we all have one of these
I-don’t know-what-it-is-and-I-don’t-have-a-name-for-it things,
And they’re all wildly and wonderfully different,
We can’t lay them down at retirement –
They are what we are, and we are what they are.

To live fully, experiencing each moment, aware, alert, and attentive. We are here, each one of us, to write our own story – and what fascinating stories we make.^

*Seth Godin’s The Song of Significance;
**Peter Senge’s The Necessary Revolution;
^Madeleine L’Engle, from Victor Strecher’s Life on Purpose.