I believe in old age: to work and to grow old: this is what life expects of us. And then one day to be old and still be quite far from understanding everything – no, but to begin, but to love, but to suspect, but to be connected to what is remote and inexpressible, all the way up into the stars.*
(Rainer Maria Rilke)

At the age of twenty four, I found myself with hundreds of people to care for, many fifty or more years older than me. I am grateful for this experience. In their presence, I believe I determined many things about how I wanted to be when older and how I did not want to be.

One of the problems, though, was to try and still be young; I would be described as “a breath of fresh air,” but many didn’t want to leave the windows open for too long.

The wonder of life I hope I was discovering is that, in each other’s company, the young can be old and the old can be young – we learn from those who are ahead of us and we never forget to be explorers.

(*From Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters on Life.)

In a word: one ought to turn the most extreme possibility inside oneself into the measure for one’s life, for our life is vast and can accommodate as much future as we are able to carry.*
(Rainer Maria Rilke)

Designing story tests the maturity and insight of the writer, his knowledge of society, nature, and the human heart. It demands both vivid imagination and powerful analytical thought.  But above all, it requires a mastery of craft.**
(Robert McKee)

It seemed like a good idea to the small group of us who didn’t enjoy the idea of a cross-country. We saw the opportunity to take a shortcut down a slope, cutting of a loop of the circuit.

Out of the bushes at the bottom of the hill appeared our P.E. teacher. My recollection is that that he was smiling as he told us that we would be running cross country again the following week when everyone was playing football.

We had cheated but the only ones cheated were ourselves.

A shortcut to our goals or to get ahead may seem like a good idea at the time, but in the end we may only be cheating ourselves out of who we can be and what we can do.

Anyway, in the exploring of the fullness of things the goal we’ve been so intent on gaining may change completely.

(*From Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters on Life.)
(**From Robert McKee‘s newsletter: Why Writers Study.)

We lead our lives so poorly because we arrive in the present always unprepared, incapable, and too distracted for everything.*
(Rainer Maria Rilke)

It is […] an unavoidable challenge: how to contain the serious within the truly playful; that is, how to keep all our finite games in infinite play.**
(James Carse)

What are you doing when you turn up to life most capable, prepared and focused?

Does this seem to be in any way hard work, or does it feel more like play?

Rainer Maria Rilke pens this interesting thought:

We have to mix our work with ourselves at such a deep level that workdays turn into holidays all by themselves, into our actual holidays.*

What is the work that feels like a holiday for you, that is, you are refreshed and renewed by it, and is perhaps playful, too?

Do you think such a thing is possible?

What is it that all of your life seems to have been preparing you for?

(*From Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters on Life.)
(**From James Carse’s Finite and Infinite Games.)

I need to be here
for a while;
there is no
other place I need
to be.

I’m not wanting to add to the growing levels of FOMO in our world, but just maybe, the fear of missing out will mean we’ll miss what will only come to us when we are away from the crowd and on our own.

ROMO = the rewards of missing out.

How will you go about finding that thing the nature of which is totally unknown to you?*
(Meno)

Most endangered [conversation]: the kind in which you listen intently to another person and expect that he or she is listening to you; where a discussion can go off on an tangent and circle back; where something unexpected can be discovered about a person or an idea.**
(Sherry Turkle)

I love the conversations in which someone see something new. The only thing better is when there are surprises for everyone.

The world deserves risky and adventurous conversations.

(*Meno, quoted in Rebecca Solnit’s A Field Guide to Getting Lost.)
(**From Sherry Turkle’s Reclaiming Conversation.)

Grant yourself the superpower of making “art” wherever you go and see how that changes what you perceive. Art is everywhere if you say so.*
(Rob Walker)

In a word: one ought to turn the most extreme possibility inside oneself into the measure for one’s life, for our life is vast and can accommodate as much future as we are able to carry.**
(Rainer Maria Rilke)

Each day comes to us requiring effort on our part to make it complete.

I don’t mean as far as the universe is concerned, but from our perspective, as conscious beings creating meaning.

The day can be what we want it to be.

I found myself wondering whether joy is another word for what Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi identified as flow, when we lose awareness of self and are one with what it is we are doing, with the thing that brings our talents, values and energies together in the gift we want to bring into the world.

I think what this day needs is some of your joy.

(*From Rob Walker’s The Art of Noticing.)
(**From Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters on Life.)

Getting hit by lightning, finding the perfect job, having a djinni grant three wishes – these are all lotteries. […] The problem with lottery thinking is that it takes us away from thinking about the chronic stuff instead. The pervasive, consistent challenge that will respond to committed effort.*
(Seth Godin)

Afraid of being alone, we struggle to pay attention to ourselves. And what suffers is our ability to pay attention to each other, we lose confidence in what we have to offer others.**
(Sherry Turkle)

Before each of us there exists three futures: expected, possible and preferred.

The most developed of these is the expected: because of previously experienced trends, we have the data to extrapolate and put together our plans. The problem is, the world can change around us.

When we popularly talk about dreams we probably positing possible futures: led by events we can imagine happening and telling ourselves stories of what will be if we meet the right person or win the lottery, so we play with “what if”scenarios. The problem is, such events are few and far between and can be malevolent as well as benevolent.

The least explored future is the preferred and is what I’m thinking about when I mention dreams: this future calls for vision, creativity and courage as we both vision-cast from the present into the future and back-cast from the future into the present in order to make it happen.

These three exist together for us, so the future is complex requiring that we build our own capacity for complexity so we might navigate what is thrown up by all three. It’s why Sherry Turkle’s words caught my attention this morning; we’re not paying attention to ourselves in the best ways for developing our complexity.

Ahead of the neuroscientists, George Eliot noticed a critical human characteristic:

[George Eliot] believed that the most essential element of human nature was its malleability, the way each of us can “will ourselves to change.”^

To open our preferred futures, we need to pay attention to ourselves but not be willing to accept the first answer that comes, this in relation to our values, talents and energies.

Our values are our truest goals in life.

Name at least three. Where have they come from? How do they connect with your own experiences in life? How do they join with each other? How do they shape a good world for others?

Our talents are our naturally occurring ways and means of connecting with our world.

Name at least five. Talents are what lie behind our surface actitivities, be they piano-player, boutique owner or writer (so you wouldn’t name these). For each, identify if they help you get things done, build relationships, produce ways of thinking, or influencing others. Then identify examples for each – at least five.

Our energies are physical, emotional, mental and spiritual.

We want all of these to be working together in a state of flow. Often we think about what we are doing. Noticing our energy turns this around to notice what our whole life is showing us first and, when we feel the energy, we stop to notice what we’re doing, because we are wanting to make more of these times happen.

There are also de-energising things our lives are trying to show to us. Again, we need to notice this and turn our attention to what we are doing, because we want to stop these things happen or figure out a way of managing them better.

There are four things you can spot for both the positive and negative experiences: what you are doing, why you doing it, who you are doing it with or for, and when you are doing it (as in, beginning or finishing something, or perhaps the time of day).

Now you’re beginning to really pay attention to yourself. Work out ways of practising these things each day for the next year and you will find yourself in quite a different future – one that you want to shape.

These are the things I will be exploring in a special provision of my dreamwhispering work for those who find themselves unemployed as a result of the coronavirus lockdown. Please pass on to those you think may be interested; those interested can message me at geoffrey@thinsilence.org.

(*From Seth Godin’s blog: Lottery thinking.)
(**From Sherry Turkle’s Reclaiming Conversation.)
(^From Jonah Lehrer’s Proust was a Neuroscientist.)

Lift is created by the onwards rush of life over the curved wing of the soul.*
(Robert Macfarlane)

We were living the process as we created it.**
(Joseph Jaworski)

Perhaps abundance is not what we have but
a path we walk,
begun by noticing
what we have,
moving us
into flow,
becoming lost
in complexity,
until we emerge,
grown into
abundance –
scarcity being
not to take the path.

Following a flow experience, the organisation of the self is more complex than it had been before. It is by becoming increasingly complex,that the self might be said to grow.^

[Edward] Thomas taught [his wife Helen] to walk differently: “with [her] body, not only with [her] legs,” feeling the landscape as she moved over it.*

(*From Robert Macfarlane’s The Old Ways.)
(**From Joseph Jaworski’s Source.)
(^^From Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow.)

One day after another –
Perfect.
They all fit.
(Robert Creeley)

If here is the place our curiosity and imagination have brought us to then it is the best place of all.

No matter what is happening around you, keep coming here.

Here, every day, you will be able to engage in the work that is in front of you.

Here, we bring the power of our imagination to the pressure of reality through attention, presence and letting come.**

If you are not in this place just yet, identify what is your curiosity and pursue it every day. Take a journal along (and doodle too) alongside your curiosity.

You’ll find your imagination awakening with more thoughts and ideas than you can handle meaning you’ll have to let some go to keep hold of others.

After all of this, though, where you will be is here, doing the work that is in front of you, every day.

(*Robert Creeley, quoted in Austin Kleon’s blog: Doing the work that’s in front of you.)
(**Thank you to Wallace Stevens for his powerful imagery in The Necessary Angel.)

Waterfall constant of arterial road
Craw of crow
Stoccato joy of small bird
Gentle percussion of foot
Sway of grass moved by I don’t know what
Warm presence of sunshine reaching through haze
Still attention of grass, blackberry, thistle, cow parsley this windless day
Swish of clothing
Soft rumbling of air as I press forwards
Accidental choir of different birds singing
Joy of colour attracting humming bees
Panting of dog and hello of owner
Hollow cowbell clang of barrier closing
Rattle and thud of machinery preparing ground …
I am listening to the day