We are the ones who must answer, must give answers to the constant ‘life questions’. Living itself means nothing other than being questioned; our whole act of being is nothing more than responding to – of being responsible towards – life.*
Viktor Frankl

It was Viktor Frankl who revealed that
it is life that asks questions of us about meaning.
I believe we are each very capable of responding
imaginatively and hopefully in
kaleidoscopic ways.
In a recent conversation I felt I needed to share how the kaleidoscope twists for me:
That people are amazing and
should have the opportunity to know why,
Then releasing this in only the way they can,
And to keep releasing more,
As Seth Godin encourages:
Now all that’s needed is more.
More time. More cycles, more bravery, more process.
More of you. Much more of you.
More idiosyncrasy, more genre, more seeing, more generosity.
More learning.**
Or as Francine Prose urges:
The challenge is to keep doing something different,
something harder and scarier in every way than the thing you did before …
to do something more difficult each time.^
This kind of more is not about getting more but
giving more,
And it is hard work being amazing, but
it is what life asks of us.
We don’t know how much more we have until we use it.

*Viktor Frankl’s Yes to Life;
**Seth Godin’s The Practice;
^Austin Kleon’s blog: Stepping into the portal.

longing becomes not the craving for perfection – for the shimmer of glory, for the myth of closure, for the happily ever after – but a kind of tenderness for imperfection, for the recognition that the place between no more and not yet is the place where the chance-miracle of life lives itself through us, and that is a beautiful place*
Maria Popova

Two things: everything depends on the individual human being, regardless of how small a number of like-minded people there are, and everything depends on each person, through action and not mere words, creatively making the meaning of a life a reality in his or her own being.**
Viktor Frankl

Robert McKee reflects on writing but
provides us with a question for our lives:
Here’s a simple test to apply to any story: What is the risk?^
It is what draws us forward,
Holding us in the right direction,
Sustaining us through fat and lean,
Pulling us into action,
However small those steps may be.
Susan Cain names it “bittersweet”:
Longing is momentum in disguise: It’s active, not passive; touched with the creative, the tender, and the divine. We long for something, or someone. We reach for it, move toward it.*
This kind of risk –
A risk for something rather than anything –
Will lead us through
dark and light, through pain and
delight, through the shortness
of our days and the endlessness of meaning, and, yet,
Still we must.

*Maria Popova’s The Marginalian blog: The Power of the Bittersweet: Susan Cain on Longing as the Fulcrum of Creativity;
**Viktor Frankl’s Yes to Life;
^Robert McKee‘s newsletter: How Risk Makes a Meaningful Story.

Running away from fear is fear, fighting pain is pain, trying to be brave is being scared. If the mind is in pain, the mind is in pain. The thinker has no other form than his thought. There is no escape.*
Alan Watts

[Awe] gives and expanded sense of time, which turn lowers our stress, leads us to feel more satisfied with our lives, and prompts us to act more generously and compassionately towards others. … Powerful moments of awe, can help reconnect us to our values, remind us of that truly matters, and put our lived into a great cosmic perspective.**
Jonah Paquette

Life is hard,^
But it is
also filled with beauty.
We make life harder when
we separate ourselves from the beauty
waiting to break upon our consciousness,
Even the joy of a rose or magnolia or foxglove, waiting patiently
to catch our eye as we leave our homes in the morning, is now
lost to monoblock and fake grass.
Robin Wall Kimerer^^ reports that
70% of Potawatomi words are verbs –
In contrast to English’s 30% –
So that is not a garden, but it is
“to be a garden” –
Such can be our experience.
You and I do not have a life, but we are
a life, or, as
Viktor Frankl describes this: we are to
actualise the content in our own act of being.*^
Returning to Robert Macfarlane’s reporting of
“childishness” in four and five year olds engaging with
the natural world, it was noted how,
paradox was, instead of a tool for collapsing meaning, a means of holding incompatibilities in rich relation^*.
I have wondered how
some of this might be retained into adulthood
as childlikeness, being open to wonder
as a way of embracing hardship.

*Katherine May’s Wintering;
**Jonah Paquette’s Awestruck
^The first of Richard Rohr’s elemental truths: Adam’s Return;
^^Robin Wall Kimerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass;
*^Viktor Frankl’s Yes to Life;
^*Robert Macfarlane’s Landmarks.

Wonder is the heaviest element on the periodic table. Even a tiny fleck of it stops time.*
Diane Ackerman

Curation is the ultimate way of transforming noise into meaning.**
Rohit Bhargava

Through awe, we
shrink and
the world becomes
BIGGER.
Awe can be tripped by many
different things –
LARGE and small – from
the natural world to
human ideas and inventions.
Here are three benefits proffered by Jonah Paquette:
Among the different ideas that have been proposed, three explanations stand out today: awe strengthens our social bonds, makes us kinder and more generous to others, and fosters a sense of curiosity about our world.*
The trouble is, our opportunities for awe
are reducing.
Robert Marfarlane shares the findings of a report that
between 1970 and 2010, the area in which British children were permitted to play unsupervised shrank by 90 per cent. The proportion of children regularly playing in ‘wild’ places fell from one in two to one in ten.^
Perhaps a useful option,
Alongside all the fancy New Year resolutions, is to
take a slow walk more often –
We’ll not know where they lead until we
venture out.

*Jonah Paquette’s Awestruck;
**Rohit Bhargava’s Non Obvious 2019;
^Robert Macfarlane’s Landmarks.

As well as opening doors, the children made dens: the doors allowing access and adventures, the dens permitting retreat and shelter.*
Robert Macfarlane

Most of us then default to one of a handful of templates and filters for all their experiences; everything gets pulled inside what my little mind already agrees with.**
Richard Rohr

It seems that
the older we get
the more dens and fewer doors
populate our lives;
More of the familiar,
Less of the unfamiliar.
This need not be so – I hold on to the truth that
people are amazing, and
ought to know why –
This is both my joy and my work –
So we find our doorways and dens,
And begin moving between the two –
To leave the known for the wonder:
awe truly is all around us, if only we take the time to look,^
And to return into the secret place for reflection because we suspect,
the opposite of contemplation is not action – it is reaction^^.
So this movement to and fro creates
a larger story emerges,
A life continues to grow
amazingly.

*Robert Macfarlane’s Landmarks;
**Richard Rohr’s The Divine Dance;
^Jonah Paquette’s Awestruck;
^^Richard Rohr’s Immortal Diamond.

there’s a chance to work on our filters, our habits and our instincts*
Seth Godin

with panache: still be scratchy and instinctive, and badly behaved*
Quentin Blake

There’s a reason why the people you admire can
do what they they do.
Whatever their craft may be,
They’ve practised it,
Not only again and again,
But also from different angles and in
different media and modalities,
Developing new ideas and
innovative expressions along the way.
The good news is,
We can all practise.

*Seth Godin’s blog: The world as it is;
**Jenny Uglow’s The Quentin Blake Book.

won’t you celebrate with me
what I have shaped into
a kind of life? i had no model.
…
i made it up
here on this bridge between
starshine and clay*
Lucille Clifton

Grace makes both the giver and the recipient more beautiful.**
Erwin McManus

I love Quentin Blake‘s simple drawing style,
something he came upon early in his days cartooning
for Punch magazine.
With a few lines and a little watercolour,
He is able to tell a story.
It holds an important truth
for us,
That when we find the lines and
add a little colour,
We come alive. These lines include
our abilities and
values and
energies,
And then we can make our own lines.
Whilst there’s nothing special about the
1st January 2023,
It can become defining if we want it to:
“From this day,
And for the following year, I will
…”
We all have lines and
colours; sometimes what we
only need to extend to
ourselves and to others is
a little grace.

*Maria Popova’s Figuring;
**Erwin McManus’ The Genius of Jesus.

All he wants to do is draw. He is, thank goodness, unstoppable.*
Jenny Uglow

[I]t is another language altogether; impossible for adults to speak and arduous for us to understand. We might call that language ‘Childish’: we have all been fluent in Childish once, and it is a language with a billion or more native speakers today – though all of those speakers will in time forget they ever knew it.**
Robert Macfarlane

Though unstoppable,
He is also 90;
He is Quentin Blake.
Robert Macfarlane may be right to assert
we all lose our fluency, and then, remembrance
of that language Childish,
But I wonder whether there are some
amongst us, like Blake,
who retain more than a few “words and phrases” – of
curiosity and awe, of
wonder and imagination, of
questions and playfulness –
That they form and shape into that language
we might name Childlike,
To use garrulously throughout their years.

*Jenny Uglow’s The Quentin Blake Book;
**Robert Macfarlane’s Landmarks.

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

In that special silence, you get a strong sense of something that wants to happen the you wouldn’t be aware of otherwise.**
Joseph Jaworski

Here’s a playful exercise,
Figuring out how what you do on a day-to-day basis would
save the world:
What do you want to save the world from?
What are your superpowers?
Who helps you to do this?
Who are you helping?
Directly or indirectly,
For large numbers or for the one –
We can all make the world a better place.
Adventures do not require us to
risk our lives crossing
Antartica,
More often, they’re available as we
turn up in our very familiar worlds
with greater intention as a result of
noticing more,
inwardly and outwardly.

*Maria Popova’s Figuring: it’s not clear whether Ernest Shackleton actually subscribed to such an advertisement;
**Peter Senge, Otto Scharmer, Joseph Jaworski’s Betty Sue Flowers’ Presence.

“Oh, Mr Campbell, you just don’t know about the modern generation. We go directly from infancy to wisdom.” I said, “That is great. All you’ve missed is life.”*
Joseph Campbell

For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think, but to think with sober judgement, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.**
The Apostle Paul

My father was born in 1909,
His father, whom I never knew, was
born in 1872.
This span of time has provided me a sense of how
much has changed
across the generations,
each having more than the one before.
Though I can easily forget,
I try to hold on to the wisdom from the past
that can help me to become more, rather
than to have more,
Wisdom I keep before me especially in these lines –
Which, counterintuitively, enlarge rather than constrict life:
Life is hard,
You are not as special as you think,
Your life is not about you,
You are not in control,
You are going to die.
Joseph Campbell gave his life to
understanding how critical myths are to us,
These stories helping us to find our
bliss,
Enabling us to live larger lives through
humility – the world doesn’t revolve around us, and
gratitude – we have so much if we bother to notice, and
faithfulness – serving one another:
Life is an expression of bliss.*

Few of us inherit the rich and complex mythologies that the Sanū pass on – the sense of the world alive around us, and of ancestors keeping a gentle watch residing in the very rocks were stand on, the very wind that buffets us. Most of us have to make our own, if we think to do it at all.^

*Joseph Campbell’s The Hero’s Journey;
**Romans 12:3;
^Katherine May’s Wintering.