You can’t make people change. But you can create an environment where they choose to.*
(Seth Godin)

A world that works for everyone does not exist except in the imagination. So we must feed the imagination.**
(Alex McManus)

When we recognise the world is not what it ought to be, the person who is strong is the person able to change themselves.

This is even more important when we see how we’re all being changed all the time by external forces.

Change from within is the best change.

(*From Seth Godin’s blog: Leadership.)
(**From Alex McManus’ Makers of Fire – eBook version.)

When we look at the world, we perceive one what is enough for our plans and actions to work and for us to get by. What we inhabit, then, is this “enough.”*
(Jordan Peterson)

If you’re not transforming your past, present, and future, then you aren’t fully experiencing the benefits of gratitude.**
(Ben Hardy)

There’s certainly a lot more to see than we’re seeing.

We can end up only seeing what we need to see in order to make sense of and reinforce our worlds, perhaps a lack of curiosity, perhaps to provide a semblance of control, perhaps even to hold back the chaos we fear will overwhelm if we open up our attention to what we do not know.

With this there can also come a fixed mindset, but what about when chaos finds a way in? And chaos always finds a way in.

Only paying attention to the things we need to and nothing else includes focusing on the things we don’t have. Ben Hardy uses the term “living in the gap.” There’s a positive-fixed mindset when people can feel they’re just better or more special than everyone else, but there’s also a negative-fixed mindset:

Living in the gap forces your brain to think that things cannot change. It’s how you develop a negatively fixed mindset.**

The other kind of mindset, Carol Dweck reminds us,^ is a growth mindset, gratitude being one of the things to help grow this:in relation to the past, because we have come a long way and have learned many things; for the present, because we have capacity to be and to change things; for the future, because we can shape the future we want to live.

Hardy recommends making time at the beginning of the day to be grateful – making time to stop and look and listen, before we rush into the street.

Nassim Taleb describes those who are wise:

In their intense meditation the hidden sound of things approaching reaches them and they listen reverently while in the street outside the people hear nothing at all.^^

(*From Jordan Peterson’s 12 Riles for Life – my main read for August.)
(**From gapingvoid’s blog: We all know gratitude is the mother of all virtues. Here’s why.)
(^See Carol Dweck’s Mindset.)
(^^From nassim Taleb’s Fooled by Randomness.)

I am finding my place and choosing my path on this incredible journey. I have BIG dreams. I see possibility. I have endless curiosity. I make discoveries. I have a feeling of wonder.*
(Susan Verde)

That’s the purpose of memory. You remember the past not so that it is “accurately recorded,” to say it again, bit so you are prepared for the future.**
(Jordan Peterson)

Here I am, wondering what I’m supposed to get up to.

It can take a lifetime to figure out, but I think that’s okay, because the important thing is to never reach the end of our curiosity, to never run out of questions, to never grow tired of discovering, to never cease growing.

In her book for children of all ages, including sixty year olds, Susan Verde helps us to see that we are more than capable of keeping moving, of not becoming stuck:

I remind myself that because I AM human, I can make choices. I can move forward.*

Jordan Peterson identifies the benefits of the human ability and practice to remember in summary. Remembering is not about the past but about the future. So, Hugh Macleod caught my eye with some words to put alongside Peterson’s:

We are all haunted by something deep inside us, and often, a lot of our best work is the result of trying to come to terms with this.^

We know our place.

We are human.

Nothing can stop us from our incredible journey.

And whilst others can help you figure out what we are supposed to get up too. Only you really know.

(*From Susan Verde’s I Am Human.)
(**From Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life – my main August read.)
(^From gapingvoid’s blog: Spiritual redemption.)

Nietzsche said that a man’s worth was determined by how much truth he could tolerate. You are by no means only what you already know. You are also that which you could know, if you only would. Thus you should never sacrifice what you could be for what you are.*
(Jordan Peterson)

As Rilke says: Hier zu sein ist so viel – to be here is immense.**
(John O’Donohue)

We are all richer than we know and we can be richer still.

This richness is in our complexity of being able to imagine and make and fail and keep going.

This is our truth.

Lies are easier to live with, mind: others are imaginative but not you; others make great things but no one wants what you have to bring; these others don’t know the meaning of the word failure; to keep going, then, when life has dealt such an impossible hand, is too difficult.

The lie requires you to keep moving, to be surrounded by noise, but find a place to stop and be quiet in, and listen to your heart beating, listen to the truth your life is:

It is so absolutely quiet that each person can hear the heartbeat of the person to his right or his left.^

Perhaps nothing will happen the first time you find this place, but keep going there and something will.

(*From Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life.)
(**From John O’Donohue’s To Bless the Space Between Us.)
(^From Alan Lightman’s Einstein’s Dreams.)

Meaning is the ultimate balance between, on the one hand, the chaos of transformation and possibility, and on the other, the discipline of pristine order, whose purpose is to produce out of the attendant chaos a new order that will be even more immaculate, and capable of bringing forth a still more balanced and productive chaos and order. Meaning is the Way, the path more abundant, the place you live when you are guided by Love and Truth and when nothing you want or could possibly want takes any precedence over precisely that. Do what is meaningful, not what is expedient.*
(Jordan Peterson)

You must understand this, my beloved: let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger; for your anger does not produce God’s righteousness.**
(James the Apostle)

Seventeen years ago, I came across a metaphor for life that includes the dynamic and the static, how we need both, the dynamic producing the static and the static stimulating the dynamic. When either spins off into their own smaller orbit, it results in spiritism or idealism on the part of the dynamic, and traditionalism or organisationalism (amnd, dare I say, totalitarianism) on the part of the static.^

Whenever I come across similar thoughts, I stop and notice.

Wallace Stevens offers just such a possibility when he writes about the new reality coming about when the pressure of reality meets the power of imagination.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi writes similarly with the concepts of belonging and exploration.^^

This is what Jordan Peterson offers us in the opening words for today. We find meaning between the chaos of the new or unfamiliar and the order of the old or familiar.

Albert Einstein claimed for himself:

I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.*^

When we realise we hardly know anything, curiosity is what we need if we are to move from the static-familiar into the dynamic-unfamiliar, understanding that we’re able then incorporate and integrate the new-familiar into who we are and what we produce.

Curiosity doesn’t try to talk over what we are becoming aware of. First of all it needs to listen and inquire and learn.

You may enjoy Rebecca Elson’s poem Theories of Everything:^*

THEORIES OF EVERYTHING
(When the lecturer’s shirt matches the painting on the wall)

He stands there speaking without love
Of theories where, in the democracy
Of this universe, or that,
There could be legislators
Who ordain trajectories for falling bodies,
Where all things must be dreamed with indifference,
And purpose is a momentary silhouette
Backlit by a blue anthropic flash,
A storm on the horizon.

But even the painting on the wall behind,
Itself an accident of shattered symmetries,
Is only half eclipsed by his transparencies
Of hierarchy and order,
And the history of thought.

And what he cannot see is this:
Himself projected next to his projections
Where the colours from the painting
Have spilled onto his shirt,
Their motion stilled into a rigorous
Design of lines and light.

(*From Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life.)
(**James 1:19-20.)
(^See Christian Schwarz’s Paradigm Shift in the Church.)
(^^See Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s Creativity.)
(*^Albert Einstein, quoted in Bernadette Jiwa’s Hunch.)
(^*Rebeca Elson’s Theories of Everything, quoted in maria Popova’s Brain Pickings: The Universe in Verse.)

No tree can grow to Heaven unless its roots reach down to Hell.*
(Carl Jung)

What if it was the case that the world revealed whatever goodness it contains in precise proportion to your desire for the best?**
(Jordan Peterson)

We want the easy life, to be special in some way, for life to work for us, to be in control, and perhaps, even, to live forever.

None of these seem particularly harmful and yet history shows us that none of us are free from dealing great harm when are free to roam wherever they will.

We need to be tethered and the tether is a five corded hawser, a means of focusing more powerfully our hopes and wants:

Life is hard;
We are not as special as we think;
Our lives are not about us;
We are not in control;
We are going to die.

The tension created between what we want and how life is where we find ourselves most alive and useful and caring, where our greatest joys and the world’s deepest needs meet.

Slackness, the separation of one from the other, is what we have to avoid.

(*Carl Jung, quoted in Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life.)
(**From Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life.)

getting what we currently want can make us blind to higher callings*
(Jordan Peterson)

Is it good? Really good? Do you like it? You can also focus on what work does that can’t be measured. What it does to your soul.**
(Austin Kleon)

Whatever you’re focused on means you’re not seeing something else.

If you’ve been focusing on it for a while, it means other things have been neglected for some time.

There’ll come a point when the things you’ve been neglecting are exactly the tools you need right now for the challenge or opportunity (sometimes the same thing) standing before you.

You can despair, believing you’ve missed what you realise you’ve been looking for, just in the wrong places, or you can take a deep breath, embrace the fact that this is going to take a little longer, and take a slow, long look in the places you haven’t looked before.

(*From Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rule for Life.)
(**From Austin Kleon’s Keep Going.)

I’m sorry.

When I blamed you, I surrendered my responsibility.
When I reacted the way I did
I closed the matter and walked away:
It was your fault and there was nothing for me to learn.

I am here to take it back.
I ought to have at least paused,
Considered the options, selected my response:
Was it my fault or yours?

My responsibility, though, is larger now.
It’s growing up, calling on the fullness of
Who I am and all I have,
Imagining a future neither you nor I had first seen.

I’m sorry I held this back from you.

How you do what you do is your competitive advantage.*
(Bernadette Jiwa)

If we lived in Truth; if we spoke the Truth – then we would walk with God once again, and respect ourselves, and others, and the world.**
(Jordan Peterson)

Some, not knowing the truth and not wanting to look bad or incompetent, make it up.

Others, know the truth, but hide it because it doesn’t provide them with the advantage they desire.

None of us are free from these temptations. In some way or other we play with order and chaos, yet those who make the seeking of the truth their how in life will spread goodness.

With his understanding of myths, Jordan Peterson writes:

The moral of Genesis 1 is that Being brought into existence through true speech is Good.**

The point is, each of us has the incredible capacity to use true speech and bring Goodness into our world with and for others:

[Good’s] existence is the unmistakable sign that we are spiritual creatures, attracted by excellence and made for good.^

We might say, we’re only becoming what we are made for.

(*From The Story of Telling: The Empathy Advantage.)
(**From Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life.)
(^From Iris Murdoch’s The Sovereignty of Good.)

You are strong, fearless, self-sufficient, you make time for reading, thinking, quiet contemplation, meditation or prayer. This need not cost a penny.*
(Tom Hodgkinson)

When writing action, it’s imperative to remember this key principle: spectacle isn’t meaning. The key to action is life and death.**
(Robert McKee)

Tom Hodgkinson’s opening words are flawed but they are also true.

We are all flawed but when we accept this then something wonderful and meaningful happens.

Maybe we could get to perfect if life were not so full of life and death struggles.

Jordan Peterson tells of when he and his wife took in a neighbour’s four year old son for the day, mentioning that he wouldn’t eat all day, adding, “That’s okay.”

But it wasn’t okay and a straightforward battle over food followed and the four year old won.

He ate his food, having been told he was a good boy and then broke into a broad smile:

Ten not-too-painful minutes later he finished his meal. We were all watching intently. It was a drama of life and death.^

Or someone says a hurtful thing about a piece of work you did. You shrug it off but every time you repeat that work, the words come back to mind. It’s a matter of life and death.

Protagonist versus the antagonism.

I include Hodgkinson’s words because this place of quiet contemplation is where we can overcome the antagonism we carry around with us, opening a true sense of who we are, allowing us to become stronger and more creative – a blossoming of ideas and dreams that we can move into the day and give some shape to.

The truest form of alchemy because we know we are flawed but whole.

(*From Tom Hodgkinson’s Business for Bohemians.)
(**From Robert McKee’s blog: Why Action Writing is a Matter of Life and Death.)
(^From Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life.)