Surprise is the great enabler of seeing.*
Alan Jacobs

We care most about the things we have struggled to understand.**
Leon Festinger

It is possible to educate ourselves
for surprise,
according to “infinite player” James Carse;
The opposite is to train ourselves
against surprise:
Surprise causes finite play to end;
it is the reason for infinite play to continue.^
The infinite player
plays to be transformed by surprise.
And not only to be transformed but also
to be transformative.
To be open to surprise,
To see and to understand, is
to become powerful, or strong
as Carse names it:
Power is finite in amount.
Strength cannot be measured,
because it is an opening and not a closing act. …
Power will always be restricted to a relatively small number of selected persons.
Anyone can be strong.^
Power desires to get more,
Strength longs to give more.

*Alan Jacob‘s newsletter: Architectural Thoughts;
**Richard Sennett’s Building and Dwelling:
^James Carse’s Finite and Infinite Games.

Each of us is an amalgam of all we have loved and lost and learned, our personal successes and failures, our particular regrets, and our singular joys – and part of that uniqueness is that we think in different ways. Not all of our thinking is right or fully formed, far from it, but there it is, regardless – that flawed and terrifying uniqueness of thought.*
Nick Cave

what we practice, we become**
Krista Tippett

Just go back to the You you were
ten years ago.
Back then, you never imagined yourself
becoming who you are today, doing
what you are doing, thinking
how you are thinking, having
learned and imagined and begun
new things.
And today, you can’t imagine the You you’ll be
ten years from now,
But what an adventure you are going to have.

*Nick Cave’s blog: The Red Hand Files #197;
**Krista Tippett’s Becoming Wise.

As a general proposition, people move through a space and dwell in a place.*
Richard Sennett

I don’t wait for inspiration, I’m to, in fact, quite sure what inspiration is, but I’m sure that if it’s going to turn up, my having started work is a precondition of its arrival.**
Quentin Blake

Dwelling primes moving,
moving informs dwelling.
So,
I wondered,
Where do you dwell?
How do you move?

*Richard Sennett’s Building and Dwelling;
**Quentin Blake’s Words and Pictures.

Good process leads to good outcomes.*
Seth Godin

What happens because of what happens next?**
Alex McManus

It should be processes –
As I think about it,
I have several that combine into
a larger one for the day.
The good thing about a process is that
we will not get lost
easily, but
when we do get lost then
we can find our way back.
I’ve been glad of this for a somewhat
disruptive beginning to the day.
It’s always worthwhile noticing and
honing our processes.

*Seth Godin’s The Practice;
**Alex McManus’ Makers of Fire.

In terms of character traits, … studies have found that awe is correlated to traits like gratefulness, a love of learning, creativity, and appreciation for beauty.**
Jonah Paquette

And now to the question of the meaning of our imperfections and of our particular imbalances: let us not forget that each individual person is imperfect, but each is imperfect in a different way, each ‘in his own way’. And imperfect as he is, he is uniquely imperfect. So, expressed in a positive way, he becomes somehow irreplaceable, unable to be represented by anyone else, unexchangeable.^
Viktor Frankl

I have to wonder what will result from
our unique imperfection meeting
our gratefulness and
awe.
Any ideas?

*Nina Simone’s soundtrack for today;
**Jonah Paquette’s Awestruck;
^Viktor Frankl’s Yes to Life.

The slide towards average sands off all interesting edges, destroying energy, interest and possibility.*
Seth Godin

human motivation is actually based on a timescale that is long, sometimes even longer than our lifetime**
Dan Ariely

Options appear when we
embrace the inconvenient life –
More exercise, more
learning, more
experimenting, more
failures, more
time, more
journaling, more
reading, more
reflection, more
conversations, more
… –
Never less.

*Seth Godin’s The Practice;
**Dan Ariely’s Payoff.

And now to the question of the meaning of our imperfections and of our particular imbalances: let us not forget that each individual person is imperfect, but each is imperfect in a different way, each ‘in his own way’. And imperfect as he is, he is uniquely imperfect. So, expressed in a positive way, he becomes somehow irreplaceable, unable to be represented by anyone else, unexchangeable.*
Viktor Frankl

The world, to a guide, is larger than themselves and their personal story. Guides care. … The guide passes down more than wisdom; they pass down compassion and empathy. They have been defeated themselves and have climbed back.; they know how it feels to be tempted by helplessness. They have been misunderstood, so they seek to understand. They have been abandoned, so they are loyal.**
Donald Miller

The competitors of the reality game show
The Traitors
line themselves up as they arrive on set according to how
successful they believe they will be.
Spoiler alert –
The two placing themselves at the bottom end were
instantly sent home.
We might say,
The ultimate finite game, being
an exclusive group of people, working towards
a goal, and adhering to the game’s rules, as
the two sent home painfully found out.
We all play in finite games, but Life is
an infinite game, being about
as many as possible being included for as long as possible, and,
When the rules get in the way, then
lay with the rules.
If Viktor Frankl is correct,
If we’re all irreplaceable, even in our
imperfections, then it’s not about being
first or last, but focusing on being
most fully ourselves:
But it is not only the uniqueness of an individual life as a whole
that gives it importance,
it is also the uniqueness of every day, every hour, every moment
that represents something that loads our existence
with the weight of a terrible and yet
beautiful responsibility.*
When we enter into the possibility of this,
We become trusted guides to others.

*Viktor Frankl’s Yes to Life;
**Donald Miller’s Hero On a Mission.

In the end, our society will be defined by not only what we create, but by what we refuse to destroy.*
John Sawhill

If you want a breakthrough, or something at the top of the rankings, or a skill that few have, or the chance to build something you’re proud of… It doesn’t pay to also require that it be convenient.**
Seth Godin

Awe draws us into a
bigger world and comes
with a responsibility that can feel like
inconvenience.
Sometimes it is to make something, and
sometimes it is to preserve something –
Though often it’s way more difficult than that,
Not one or the other, but both/and _
Which is even more inconvenient.
We may think we’re just getting on with life,
But in between me and life there exists
a story:
A myth is essentially a guide;
it tells us what we must do in order to
live richly.^
An some stories are better than others;
Indeed, it’s beholden upon us to creating better
personal and social stories –
Something that comes from
a story that humans have been creating for
ten of thousands of years,
In which humility, gratitude and faithfulness are good things,
And pride, greed and foolishness are bad things:
Learning to make meaning from our life stories
may be the most indispensable but least understood
skill of our time. Paul Wong, a
meaning researcher in Toronto, calls meaning-making
“the best kept secret to the greatest human adventure.”^^
I must confess that I want wonderful things in life to
come easily, to be busy creating and
not have to worry about
destroying,
But an inconvenient life may provide
the best story of all.

*Robert Macfarlane’s Landmarks;
**Seth Godin’s blog: And also convenient;
^Karen Armstrong’s A Short History of Myth;
^^Bruce Feiler’s Life is in the Transitions.

[T]he fact, and only the fact, that we are mortal, that our lives are finite, that our time is restricted and our possibilities are limited, this fact is what makes it meaningful to do something, to explore a possibility and make it become a reality, to fulfil it, to use our time and occupy it. Death gives us a compulsion to do so. Therefore death forms a background against which our act of being becomes a responsibility.*
Viktor Frankl

That’s my responsibility,
Not yours.
Mihály Csikszentmihalyi and
Jonah Paquette
here describe two sides of what happens when
we take responsibility:
Don’t aim at success –
the more you make it your target,
the more you are going to miss it.
For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued:
it must ensue …
as the intended side effect of one’s
personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself.**
As you reflect on how your actions flow outward,
creating a cascade of goodness around you,
you may experience a feeling of awe.^
Responsibility follows a dream and hones skills,
Which, when applied,
Make flow and awe possible,
Though there are other things to watch for –
Here are four:
Success is not guaranteed,
Some will hate what you do;
It’s more important than life itself, and
it’s transformative.
Yet responsibility is
what you do, and it contains
another neat trick,
Carrying within itself its own
permission.

*Viktor Frankl’s Yes to Life;
Mihály Csiksgentmihalyi’s Flow;
^Jonah Paquette’s Awestruck.

Technology is miraculous, but so too is nature – and this aspect of the world’s wonder seems under threat of erasure in children’s narratives, dreams and plots.*
Robert Macfarlane

Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.**
Carl Sagan

The numbers were in for the
BBC’s ‘500 Words’ children’s short stories competition:
120,000 entrants,
53 million words.
The Oxford University Press revealed its
children’s word of the year 2015 to be
hashtag.
Of the nature words included by the children,
Oak appeared at the top of the list 3,975 times,
Owl 3,348 times,
Eagle 1,855 times,
But at the bottom of this list:
Buttercup 168 times,
Blackbird 167 times,
Conker 155 times.
We do not notice
the things we do not have a word for.
On a larger stage,
It may just be that we have a word gap between
the life that we have and
the life that we want,
And some of these will be
natural world words.
Yet life is life and it’s never too late.

*Robert Macfarlane’s Landmarks;
**Jonah Paquette’s Awestruck.