While finite games are externally defined, infinite games are internally defined.  The time of an infinite game is not world-time, but the time created within the play itself.  Since each play of an infinite game eliminates boundaries it opens to players as new horizon of time.*
James Carse

*James Carse’s Finite and Infinite Games.

What we have above what we can use is not properly ours, tho’ we possess it.*
Benjamin Franklin

Nature bids us do well by all. … Wherever there is a human being, we have an opportunity for kindness.**
Seneca

Hands up if you’ve read James Joyce‘s Ulysses? –
(My hand stayed down);
Who’s heard this line:
“What’s yours is mine and what’s mine is my own”? –
Which comes from Ulysses;
Dare we take a look at what we have and announce
What’s mine is yours? –
Time, talents, kindness, concern, love:
Beware, adventures at hand.

*Lewis Hyde’s Common As Air;
**Ryan Holiday’s The Daily Stoic.

The same story can be told in many ways, and the way we tell it changes who we are and what we become.*
Seth Godin

Stories that tell what you almost did aren’t good stories. Because almost doing the thing isn’t very close to having actually done it. They’re worlds apart. We like the stories where you did the thing.**
Gabe Anderson

You don’t have long, so if you want to rewrite your story
the good news is you already have plenty of material to work with:
Talents and abilities, energies and passions,
Values and dreams – lay everything out, then
imagine, feel, but, most importantly,
Give expression.^

*Seth Godin’s blog: Your autobiography;
**Gabe Anderson’s blog: Almost Stories;
^And if I can help, get in touch..

The hardest part of becoming known for something is sticking with it even when nobody cares.*
Gabe Anderson

All great [people] were great workers, untiring not only in invention but also in rejecting, sifting, reforming, arranging.**
Friedrich Nietzsche

If you don’t care about the thing you do, maybe
you need a new direction:
If you find nothing of surprise on your story’s horizon,
you need a new compass point.^

But if you do care, you have some options:
Get rid of the parts that aren’t so important
or aren’t working for you,
Bring the most important elements to the fore,
Improve wherever you can, and
rearrange them in a new way,
A new story.

even to live is an act of courage^^

*Gabe Anderson’s blog: Being Known For Something;
**James Clear’s 3-2-1 newsletter: On finding games worth winning, the power of making a lot and choosing the best, and two types of kindness;
^Robert McKee‘s newsletter: Discovering Your Meaning;
^^Seneca, from Ryan Holiday’s Discipline is Destiny.

The ruby slippers are symbolic of your own capacities that you suspect you have but don’t know how to use.*
Jean Houston

“I’m not that smart.” Someone said that to me the other day and it was heartbreaking … The correct thing to say is, “I don’t care that much.” I don’t care enough to do the reading, to fail along the way, to show up, to make a promise, to learn as I go, to confront failure, to get better at the work.  All of that might be true. But you’re almost certainly smart enough.**
Seth Godin

Look down at your feet,
You’re wearing your red shoes –
Just like everyone else –
The thing you require is to
figure out how to use them –
Like Dorothy, to find your
yellow brick road and some
companions and take
a walk.

*Jean Houston’s The Wizard of Us;
**Seth Godin’s blog: “I’m not that smart”;
^Quia non iter: because he did not travel.

Through kindness we slant, shockingly and miraculously, toward meaning. We discover, in that smallest gesture of good will laid at the feet of our mutual and monumental loss, “the point.”*
Nick Cave

And how will we choose to walk through the world and what will we leave behind …**
Seth Godin

We are most human when we express kindness
and help in sorrow and pain, when we think of others
rather than ourselves, laying down
our agenda, and serving another.

*Nick Cave’s Red Hand Files blog: #204;
**Seth Godin’s blog: We forgot to choose.

Insist on yourself; never imitate …**
Ralph Waldo Emerson

People with character may be loud or quiet, but they tend to have a level of self-respect.^
David Brooks

Yes, we are dysfunctional,
We seem to own a tireless
ability to mess up, but we are
also gifted for good and beauty.

*Some music to listen to as you read and reflect: The Staple Singers’ Respect Yourself;
**Lewis Hyde’s Common As Air;
^David Brooks’ The Road to Character.

The true advances of my life could not be brought about by force, but occur silently, and that I prepare for them while working quietly and with concentration on the things that on a deep level I recognise to be my tasks.*
Rainer Maria Rilke

When we rewrite our narrative of the past, we end up creating a different future. We have more control over that narrative than we give ourselves credit for.**
Seth Godin

Identifying what it is we must do, and simply getting on with it
small step after small step, refires our imagination and fuels our heart;
We find ourselves rewriting our past as what has made it possible
to be where we are now, doing what fills us up, making a difference
for someone, somewhere, a sure path for us to follow.

*Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters On Life;
**Seth Godin’s blog: It could have easily gone the other way.

Sensitive people get a bigger boost from the same things that help anyone: a mentor, a healthy home, a positive group of friends. The boost allows them to do more and go further if they are given the nudge in the right direction. Sensitive people are built for supergrowth.*
Jenn Granneman and Andre Sólo

When I am experiencing meaning, it feels as though my life is a story that is interesting to myself and also good for the world.**
Donald Miller

The information, the feelings, the asks –
It may all feel so overwhelming,
Paralysing –
But what it’s really saying is
you get what others don’t, you catch what others miss, you see
possibility when others are indifferent:
What you will find among all the feelings and thoughts is your meaning,
Your mission –
You won’t take on everything, but
you can focus on something significant, and to pin this down,
Preventing it from being carried away by the
unrelenting thoughts and feelings,
You can begin by writing it down, now:
Please receive this as a nudge
into the wonder of what you must do.

Writing down this mission statement is also a great way to “wake up the page.” That’s the term I use to describe marking the page for the first time.^

*Jenn Granneman and Andre Sólo’s Sensitive;
**Donald Miller’s Hero On a Mission;
^Ryder Carroll’s The Bullet Journal Method.

True characters can only be expressed through dilemma … A character is the choices they make over a lifetime.*
Robert McKee

The witch is the shadowed projection of Dorothy’s own resentment and hostility taken to its ultimate form. In all great initiatory experience, a person meets the shadow or evil within and must understand and conquer it before one can return home again.**
Jean Houston

Jean Houston suggests that Dorothy’s character is separated and
displayed in two lives in the Wizard of Oz –
Our dilemmas in life both help us to see ourselves and
to become who we want to be, and the fact that
this can keep happening over a lifetime means that
we should not give up on ourselves or on others:
Compare Dorothy in the beginning of the movie and
in the final scene –
So we use every day.

*Robert McKee‘s newsletter: Who Is Your Character, Really?;
**Jean Houston’s The Wizard of Us.