There’s only one age: alive.*
Agnes Varda

… there’s plenty of life in you yet –
Indeed, if you believe it,
the greatest adventures are ahead of you.

And if you are at the other end of
this age equation, know that you have plenty of wisdom already,
And we need to see through your eyes.

*Austin Kleon’s blog: A Quote a Day.

The truth that many people never understand is that the more you try to avoid suffering, the more you suffer, because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you, in proportion to your fear of being hurt.*
Thomas Merton

He acknowledged me when I most needed it. I was empowered in the midst of personal erosion, and my life has been very different for it. I swore to myself then that whenever I came across someone “going under” or in the throes of disacknowledgement, I would try to reach and acknowledge that person as I had been acknowledged.**
Jean Houston

It is likely that what we hope for lies
on the other side of suffering –
The thing we most want to avoid becomes
the means for growth and momentum.

The ancients knew this and
wrote it into their myths,
Now recognised in the hero’s journey as
the ordeal or abyss or death and rebirth.

Every human suffers, but
those who have passed and transformed through suffering^
become our listeners and guides, and
we can be counted among them.

*Oliver Burkeman’s The Antidote;
**Jean Houston’s The Possible Human;
^Here are two responses you may want to try: 1. write about the suffering in the second or third person – sense the distance this begins to create; 2. imagine where you sense you carry the suffering inside you, noticing its shape, colour, texture, and listen for what it is trying to say – perhaps write these things down using the first response.

Act with zest on day at a time, and never mind the rest.*
Horace

This organic emergence of rituals is seemingly a product of the brain’s remarkable ability to monitor whether we are achieving our desired goals … .**
Ethan Kross

To bring all of our energy into a day is
a wonderful thing: to invest our
heart and soul and mind and strength
in something meaningful and life-giving
for ourselves and others is wisdom’s way.

To aid this, we create our rituals so that
we don’t get lost; and knowing that we organically produce these,
To distract ourselves or keep moving,
Means that we can harness this power to create our
smarter rituals enabling us to be zesty people.

Why not take a moment to think through,
Or better, write down, your own rituals,
looking for places to shape them for more zestiness?

*Oliver Burkeman’s Meditations for Mortals;
**Ethan Kross’ Chatter.

Everyone should find the centre of his life in his work and be able to grow out from this point as far as possible.*
Rainer Maria Rilke

Glinda may also be seen as Dorothy herself – the girl’s entelechy – writ large on the stage of consciousness.**
Jean Houston

You are made to live from
the inside out –
Joseph Campbell spoke about how we must
follow our bliss,
What resonates deeply within us and
brings us to fulfilment;
This already resides within us –
though it may be covered by the flotsam
and jetsam of life, which we need to
let go of.

*Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters on Life;
**Jean Houston’s The Wizard of Us.

It’s easy to forget what we’ve accomplished. And when we do, we lose sight of the powerful fact that if we’ve done it before, we can do it again.*
Dorie Clark

Mind sculpting refers to the deliberate practice of shaping one’s thoughts, beliefs, and mental habits to align with personal goals and values.**
AleXander McManus

You may simply want to keep doing
the things you are good at, or, possibly,
You could organise the things that
set your heart alight,
To be able to manifest these
more innovatively, complexly, colourfully, meaningfully, generously.

Here are three starting points:
Humility, to embrace the truth of who you are,
Gratitude, to acknowledge all that you have,
Faithfulness, to explore a multiplicity of ways for
bringing who you are and what you have
into the lives of others.^

*Dorie Clark’s The Long Game;
**AleXander McManus’ FutureU;
^Again, if I can help, let me know: geoffreybaines@gmail.com – my apologies if you’ve been trying to use geoffrey@thinsilence.org as the link appears broken.

Invented beings enlighten us, help us make precious sense of ourselves and those around us.*
Robert McKee

A book is a chance to have a conversation. The conversation is the product, the book is just the catalyst.**
Seth Godin

Books are a very recent vehicle for
something humans have engaged in for
tens of thousands of years,
Stories helping us to understand ourselves and
our place within the world –
The best stories, and
books for that matter, are not telling us things,
They are inviting us to engage in dialogue,
Within which we experience, as well as
contribute to, growth and transition.

*Robert McKee’s Character;
**Seth Godin’s blog: Five lessons from week one of This is Strategy.

The familiar, precisely because it is familiar, remains unknown to us.*
George Hegel

Get the bucket size right and your life changes. This is probably the easiest, fastest and most productive way to improve our well being.**
Seth Godin

We think we know our world, each
other, ourselves –
We don’t.

We think we need
more to be fulfilled and satisfied but
we probably already have all we require.

Perhaps we should take a closer look?

*John O’Donohue’s Eternal Echoes;
**Seth Godin’s blog: Bucket size.

Susan Sontag said somewhere something like any technology that slows us down in our writing rather than speeding us up is the one we ought to use.*
Ross Gay

As for writing, so for life.

It is reported that Parisian flaneurs would
walk a tortoise to slow them down to notice more.

Richard Rohr writes about learning to
live in our souls because we are smaller than
our souls – we are also faster, so
we slow down for our souls to catch up.

*Ross Gay’s The Book of Delights.

Women have always been and continue to accomplish heroic feats with the difference that their emphasis has tended to be on process rather than product – making things cohere, relate, develop, and grow … the inner experience being of equal value to the outer action.*
Jean Houston

Consistent, gradual and persistent are the unsung forces of cultural change.**
Seth Godin

Slow makes it possible to
develop some deeper abilities,
The kind that enable us to nurture oneness
and connection, blossoming into collaboration.

*Jean Houston’s The Wizard of Us;
**Seth Godin’s blog: The thing about pressure.

Women have always been and continue to accomplish heroic feats with the difference that their emphasis has tended to be on process rather than product – making things cohere, relate, develop, and grow … the inner experience being of equal value to the outer action.*
Jean Houston

Consistent, gradual and persistent are the unsung forces of cultural change.**
Seth Godin

What if the way we
respond to this challenge is
forming us into the person
able to meet the next one?

*Jean Houston’s The Wizard of Us;
**Seth Godin’s blog: The thing about pressure.