To be a human being among people and to remain one forever, no matter in what circumstances, not to grow despondent and not to lose heart – that’s what life is about, that’s its task.*
Fyodor Dostoevsky

You should be good now. Instead you choose tomorrow.**
Ryan Holiday

These words remind me of my friend Alex‘s question –
Which I have mentioned here many times –
What does it mean to you to be human?

There are as many answers to this question
as there are people breathing on this planet right now, though
my own response has been: to live with creativity, generosity, and enjoyment.^

When Ramez Naam writes about becoming more than human,
He lists technological, surgical, and pharmaceutical solutions;
When Brian McLaren writes about being human it’s about love.

How much better could I be as a human? –
I have to admit I don’t know;
All I know is how easy it is to put off finding out.

*Brian McLaren’s Faith After Doubt;
**Ryan Holiday’s Discipline is Destiny;
^Enjoyment as the result of creativity and generosity.

a lot of people were raised to believe that they need to fix their weaknesses but their talents would take care of themselves*
Mary Reckmeyer

May you have the grace of encouragement
To awaken the gift in another’s heart,
Building in them the confidence
To follow the call of the gift.**
John O’Donohue

We’re not trying to become balanced in our skills-set –
That’s an individualistic view of things;
Our strengths are what they are because –
Consciously or unconsciously –
We have poured time and effort into them …
And not into other abilities;
There’ll be others out there who have
totally the opposite talents and strengths to us, and
that’s a good thing –
This is how the balance should be.

Doing the things we must will be
hard enough, but
we find ourselves drawn back to them again and again;
There are other things that we never have
the energy for, that we never want to return to –
We must stop doing these things – we’ll never be really any good at them – and
focus on what really matters to us.

*Mary Reckmeyer’s Strengths Based Parenting;
**John O’Donohue’s Benedictus: For a New Position.

What we call the beginning is often the end. 
And to make an end is to make a beginning. 
The end is where we begin from.*
T. S. Eliot

*Ben Hardy’s Personality Isn’t Permanent.

Whether it’s splitting a check, getting a project done or making an impact on the culture or a cause, if you want things to get better, the only way is to be prepared to do more than your fair share.*
Seth Godin

Scientists have … found that to reach a state of flow, a task must be roughly 4 percent beyond our current ability.**
James Clear

We may want to rethink things if
we’re trying to get away with investing the least effort,
Remaining in our comfort zones,
Or letting others take most of the strain;
We may be running the risk of staying delightfully unburdened by
the most energising, personally developing, planet-contributing,
Life-transcending opportunities we will ever come upon.

*Seth Godin’s blog: More than your share;
**James Clear’s Atomic Habits.

Whatever our gift, we are called to give it and to dance for the renewal of the world. In return for the privilege of breath.*
Robin Wall Kimmerer

Why are we not better than we are?**
Eric Threthewey

We have been given a wonderful gift,
Each breath we take is a reminder;
We have a great gift to bring –
If we can overcome the many voices for
holding back:
“This is good enough”
“I have nothing better”
“I have nothing to bring”
“Nobody would want it”
“I’m just thankful I’m still here”
“The world owes me more”
…

Figuring out our gift and
bringing it into the world is
the best way towards everything being
better.

Good things seem to take a long time. Bad things seem to happen all at once. And while there’s some truth to these broad strokes, not being able to calculate when the bad things might happen all at once isn’t a good enough reason not to build good things. Even if it takes a long time.^

*Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass;
**Maria Popova’s The Marginalian blog: Why Are We Not Better Than We Are: How Poetry Saves Lives;
^Gabe Anderson’s blog: Good Things, Bad Things.

Staying open-handed, treasuring but not grasping, is critical to the contemplative stance.*
Krista Tippett

Here is my secret. It’s quite simple. One sees clearly only with the heart. Anything essential is invisible to the eyes.**
The Little Prince

How long can I remain open – to something or someone or myself
or god –
Without judgement or sifting or exposition?;
This is the hardest work:
Contemplation as openness leading to love –
Not some romanticised notion of love, but
love that is steadfast in its openness and treasuring
without possessing.

*Krista Tippett’s Becoming Wise;
**Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s The Little Prince.

Imitate, that you may be different.*
Edward P. J. Corbett

Won’t you be walking in your predecessors’ footsteps. I surely will use the older path, but if I find a shorter and smoother way, I’ll blaze a trail there. The ones who pioneered these trails aren’t our masters, but our guides. Truth stands open to everyone, it hasn’t been monopolised.**
Seneca

First of all you explored the field,
Learnt the domain,
Grateful for the paths of others that have made it possible
to have a life that works for you;
Now, beyond the field, without the domain, you sense there is
more beyond the terminus – a whole world of more to be discovered,
And you hesitatingly take your first lost step.

If you are comfortable with where you are, you will never know how far you can go. If you refuse to change, then you refuse to grow.^

*Annie Murphy Paul’s The Extended Mind;
**Ryan Holiday’s The Daily Stoic;
^Erwin McManus’ The Way of the Warrior.

The secret to diagnosing a problem with a broken scene lies in its subtext.*
Robert McKee

Being more vulnerable, we reach out, we extend our hands and your hearts to others who are wounded. It is only at such a pass that we grow into a larger sense of what life is about and act, therefore, out of a deeper and nobler nature.**
Jean Houston

I was never get to where I wanted to be with
what lay beneath the surface –
I had to face the the beliefs and truths I held within myself –
But life and god are good,
And this has always been more of an adventure than punishment –
I say “has” because it continues,
Always open and searching,
Finding confederates along the way.

*Robert McKee‘s newsletter: The Secret to Fixing Broken Scenes;
**Jean Houston’s A Mythic Life.

Apotheosis (n)
a: the perfect form or example of something
b: the highest or best part of something

Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always –
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing no less than everything) …*
T. S. Eliot

There’s always more to discover about ourselves
than we know;
The best way to plumb our depths is to
add venture:
The basic story of the hero journey
Involves giving up where you are, 
going into the realm of adventure,
coming to some kind of 
symbolically rendered realisation,
and then returning to the field of normal life.**

A good place to begin is to identify something important about yourself,
Imagine the smallest enhancing iteration of this you can and
action it – follow where it leads,
And perhaps what you find will be worth
everything.

*David Whyte’s Crossing the Unknown Sea;
**Joseph Campbell’s Pathways to Bliss.

My companion knew how much he didn’t know, and he had a sense of how much he would never know. And I didn’t know either, at least not yet.*
Brian McLaren

*Brian McLaren’s Faith After Doubt.