In coils of wave, winding in dance, the sea
Is too fluent to feel it’s own silence,
Only for the sure gaze and grip of shore
It would not know itself to be the sea.*
(John O’Donohue)

The protagonist in the science fiction novel I was reading used the Buddhist reflective practices of anapana, vipassanā and metta.  Since then, I have used these to add nuance to the Hebrew pause or selah I already use – to be quiet, to be still.

Anapana is about observation and I use it to gather, to be open to all that is around me, including the words I am reading.  

Metta is about loving kindness, which I understand to be extending to others something of what I have gathered.

In between comes vipassanā, a special seeing, to understand, take to heart and find resonance.

This seeing and understanding is our third eye, not seeing the surface or simplicity of something, nor even its complexity, but to see the wholeness of something in a simplicity beyond complexity:

The sense of wonder can also help you to recognise and appreciate the mystery of your own life.**

(*From John O’Donohue’s Echoes of Memory: Expectations.)
(**From John O’Donohue’s Eternal Echoes.)

To be playful is to allow for possibility whatever the cost to oneself.*
(James Carse)

I’m spending three days with a group of people exploring how to develop competence in complexity.

We live in “powerful times” and it demands different competencies to those which have served us in the past.

There are many tools on offer at our event, ways and means for exploring and working through complexity, but we know it’s not about the tools alone.  We must become skilful at using these and, largely, this is about becoming the most important tool of all: a crafts-person, one who is a maker of tools.

Each of us has a personal way into becoming a crafts-person for the 21st century and they’re not too difficult to find; the thing we often struggle with is the cost.

(*From James Carse’s Finite and Infinite Games.)

A naive dream is that it’s possible to go on a long bike ride – and enjoy the journey going downhill in each direction. […] The hard work is digging deeper than usual on the up hills – that’s the best chance you have to earn a downhill later.*
(Seth Godin)

The words of today’s title come from a song we used to sing with our children.  It continues:

When you get impatient, you’ll only start to worry.
Remember, remember that God is patient too,
And think of all times when others have to wait for you.**

Being patient doesn’t mean we do nothing, it does mean that we take the time to do the deeper and more significant work in us and around us that will lead to more.  As Seth Godin says elsewhere, patience allows us to ‘choose to pursue something longer term, more resilient, more important.^

Patience allows us to build capacity, within ourselves and with those around us.  The kind of patience, to borrow Edgar Schein’s words:

that will enable you to understand and change what is going on and, in that process, will not only make you a better person, but enable you to make a better world.^^

When we practise patience, we are shaping our art to be its most impactful.

If you rush on, beware, you may actually get what you are running towards, and sometimes having to slow down is a gift in disguise.

(*From Seth Godin’s blog: Uphill both ways.)
(**From His and Hernandez Music: Patience.)
(^From Seth Godin’s blog: Up and to the right.)
(^Edgar Schein, quoted in Maureen O’Hara’s and Graham Leicester’s Dancing at the Edge.)

It’s possible that you no longer need to get better at your craft. That your craft is just fine. It’s possible that you need to be braver instead.*
(Seth Godin)

But in other cases – as the fir trees – the fragrance is the sap, is the very life itself. When the aromatic savour of the pine goes searching into the deepest recesses of my lungs, I know it is life that is entering.**
(Nan Shepherd)

There are three big thresholds to be crossed, conversations we need to have if we are to move into life-in-all-its-fullness.

The first is between judgement and openness:

You need not leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. You need not even listen, simply wait, just learn to become quiet, and still, and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked.^

The second conversation is between cynicism and compassion. Will we allow ourselves to care about the more we are discovering, around us and within each of us?

The third is the conversation between fear and courage. We know more, we feel more, and will we do more?

(*From Seth Godin’s blog: The limits of technique.)
(**From Nan Shepherd’s The Living Mountain.)
(^Franz Kafka, quoted in Sherry Turkle’s Reclaiming Conversation.)

Successful companies don’t expect to start out ahead of the game on day one.  They plan to earn an advantage over time, by knowing who they want to serve, and how – then building on their strengths to tell the story that matches their ideal customer’s worldview.*
(Bernadette Jiwa)

In many ways, these words are also true for our purposeful lives.

We’re not trying to make a difference for everyone but for some.

Our first conversation, then, finds us noticing, paying attention, observing.

What is our joy and what do people need?

(*From Bernadette Jiwa’s blog The Story of Telling: Earning a Competitive Advantage.)

Storytelling is intrinsic to the human mind, but to achieve excellence, authors must move beyond instinct to experiment and master their craft anew.*
(Robert McKee)

Every creative endeavour becomes a realisation of both how limited and unlimited we are.**
(Erwin McManus)

Our lives are made up of stories.

Even the most mundane and everyday life is a story we have either accepted or made up for ourselves.

There are always better stories in us. The thing is, these require attention, time and effort, which is different to being impossible.

Our best stories emerge where what we can presently do and what we are unable to do meet:

May the work fit the rhythm of your soul,
Enabling you to draw from the invisible
New ideas and vision that will inspire.^

(*From Robert McKee‘s newsletter: Why Learning Craft is Essential for Writers.)
(**From Erwin McManus’ The Artisan Soul.)
(^From John O’Donohue’s To Bless the Space Between Us: For a New Position.)

Whereas screen activity tends to rev kids up, the concrete worlds of modelling clay, finger paints, and building blocks slow them down. The physicality of these materials – the sticky thickness of clay, the hard solidity of blocks – offers a real resistance that gives children time to think, to use their imaginations to making their own worlds.*
(Sherry Turkle)

Fast produces a kind of thinking, slow produces and different kind of thinking. Fast and slow wire our brains in different ways.

Here are some books that I’ve appreciated that come to this from different directions, slowing down my thinking, offering me some resistance to push into:

Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow
Jonah Lehrer’s Proust was a Neuroscientist
Richard Sennett’s The Craftsman
Maggie Berg and Barbara Seeber’s The Slow Professor
Keri Smith’s The Wander Society
Nancy Kline’s Time to Think and More Time to Think.

Of course, it’s not just about thinking, it’s about everything we do because of how we think.

(*From Sherry Turkle’s Reclaiming Conversation.)

Buddhism. Stoicism. Epicureanism. Christianity. Hinduism. It’s all but impossible to find a philosophical school or religion that does not venerate this inner peace – this stillness – as the highest good, and as the key to elite performance and a happy life. And when basically all the wisdom of the ancient world agrees on something, only a fool would decline to listen.*
(Ryan Holiday)

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

Developing presence through the exploration of solitude and stillness, to be happy and familiar and comfortable with ourselves, who we are and what our sense of life-purpose, opens up so many possibilities that it’s worth the time spent.

Indeed, as James Carse points out, the normal boundaries begin to alter and even disappear as we see them differently, and time deepens because our personal capacity to deal with complexity is growing.

This is the time of flow, who we are and what we do synchronising. It’s not only to be found in the experience of the one, but also between people who’re engaging in an activity being shaped by their combined capacities for playing with complexity rather than by the demands from without.

(*From Ryan Holiday’s Stillness is the Key.)
(**From James Carse’s Finite and Infinite Games.)

Hassoun says that she will sometimes imagine that her manager gives her a friendly hug. And sometimes Hassoun says she imagines her manager putting a reassuring hand on her shoulder. Hassoun understands that she is not permitting herself a conversation so she fantasises a hug.*
(Sherry Turkle)

Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.**
(Jesus of Nazerath)

Raven Hassoun is too busy texting, emailing and messaging to have any contact with her work colleagues. In fact she avoids it: “I don’t have the time.” All the messages that come to her arrive with demands but she can control these more from a distance.

Of course, emails beget emails, texts beget texts and messages beget messages. If CEO Stan Hammond is right and emails ‘create a string of misunderstandings,’* then we are not more in control but less.

Face-to-face conversation is best. It’s why companies are beginning to look for ways to reintroduce it.

(*From Sherry Turkle’s Reclaiming Conversation.)
(**Matthew 11: 28-30.)

The revelation of plenitude calls for a revelation of mind.*
(Lewis Hyde)

Freelancers show up in the world without a safety net, offering to do their best. Freelancers rarely get the credit they deserve for the work they do. […] But it’s about a pure a craft as most of us can find.**
(Seth Godin)

Finding your inner freelancer doesn’t mean you’ll become one.

It does mean that in everyone there is something that could be freelanced, which means that connecting with this will mean there’s more to take to work with us, whatever that is and wherever that may be – it is the thing that makes us exceptional, remarkable.

(*From Lewis Hyde’s Trickster Makes This World.)
(**From Seth Godin’s blog: Freelancing is a brave act.)