My past is working for me, not
Against me,
Not to me.
My constant companion,
I welcome some of what it shares
and regret others,
And yet it is
my teacher, guide, encourager
To live today well,
And where I don’t,
It will be there for me tomorrow,
My helper and loyal friend.

I know I am not the person I need to be,
Nor the person I could be –
there is still possibility, thankfully;
If I am willing to learn,
If I humble myself
before my teachers,
Today,
And again, tomorrow.

Writing well and reading well mean paying attention
to all the subtleties embodied in a sentence
In its exact form and no other.*
Verlyn Klinkenborg

Notice everything about your life.

Say it all to yourself and hear everything..

The pain as well as the joy,
The trauma as well as the triumphs:

Trauma in a variety of forms, is part of each of our lives. It includes any negative experience or incident that shapes who you are and how you operate in the world**

We may believe that to live our desirable life
there must be no shadow, no darkness.
Stephen Gilligan and Robert Dilts suggest that we not only carry a gift within us,
But also a woundedness.^

We are not only our gift,
We are not only our woundedness:

Works of art are born from the conflict of life. … Life is about the ultimate questions of finding love and self-worth, or bringing serenity to inner chaos, of the titanic social inequities everywhere around us, of time running out.^^

So we pay attention to all these subtleties
embodied in our lives,
Somehow creating from this unlikely mix
our lives-in-all-their-fullness.

*From Verlyn Klinkenborg’s Several Short Sentences About Writing;
**From Ben Hardy’s Personality Isn’t Permanent;
^From Stephen Gilligan and Robert Dilts’ The Hero’s Journey;
^^From Robert McKee‘s newsletter: The World According to Writers.

If a woman holds on to this gift of being old while she is young and young while she is old, she will always know what comes next.*
Clarissa Pinkola Estés

Pursue clarity … . In the pursuit of clarity, style reveals itself. Your clarity will differ from anyone else’s without your intention to make it differ.**
Verlyn Klinkenborg

When I was younger, I used to say that I was born old.

I was trying to live wisely and have enough discipline as a young man not to mess up (too often).

Now I’m old, my hope is to have enough vitality. Enough joy, too:

Now is the time to free the heart,
Let all intentions and worries stop,
Free the joy inside the self,
Awaken to the wonder of your life.^

May the discipline continue. To stay curious, explore some things deeply, keep talking with and learning from amazing people of all ages, try out some new things.

*From Clarissa Pinkola Estés’ Women Who Run With the Wolves;
**From Verlyn Klinkenborg’s Several short sentences about writing:
^From John O’Donohue’s Benedictus: For an Occasion of Celebration.

Hopefully, your future self will be far wiser and have a far wider range of experiences than your current self. Your future self will have greater opportunities, deeper relationships, and a better self-view. Hopefully your future self will have greater agency and choice that your current self, with more knowledge, skills and connections.*
Ben Hardy

All holiness is about learning to hear the voice of your own soul. It is always there and the more deeply you learn to listen, the greater the surprises and discoveries that will unfold. To enter into the gentleness of your own soul changes the tone and quality of your life. … The soul dwells where beauty lives.**
Seth Godin

Holiness as set-apartness.

Purpose.

So we listen deeply to our soul.

Imagining a future self beyond the current.

We may have a problem, though.

Remembering the present self.

Too old, wrong background, failure … .

It’s time to forget:

It’s an attempt to open our minds to possibilities other than the ones we remember, and the ones we already know we like.  Something has to be done to get us free of our memories and choices.^

So we enter unfamiliar spaces.

We name our values.

Haven’t done that before.

We uncover our talents.

Where did those come from?

We get out of our heads and into our bodies.

Noticing the energies.

This is hard.

Futures aren’t easy.

Unless you download more of the same.

*From Ben Hardy’s Personality Isn’t Permanent;
**From John O’Donohue’s Divine Beauty;
^John Cage, quoted in Lewis Hyde’s A Primer for Forgetting.

You’ll never run out of noticing … .*
Verlyn Klinkenborg

Noticing feeds choice.

We begin with reality.

Richard Sennett writes about how important resistance is to what we make:

We want to start with resistances, those facts that stand in the way of the will. Resistances themselves come in two forms: found and made.**

We will likely find some ideas nearby, like docks growing by nettles:

Ideas live in the world as we do. We discover certain ideas at certain times.^

Look around.

Avoiding reality and resistance may also mean missing ideas that offer a future we’d choose.

Not lifting it off some shelf.

Living it into existence.

*From Verlyn Klinkenborg’s Several short sentences about writing;
**From Richard Sennett’s The Craftsman;
^From M. C. Richards’ Centering.

The Chur Qiu Fan Lu […], written sometime in the second century BC, describes yellow as “the colour of rulers.”
Kassia St. Clair

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.**
Marcel Proust

There’s an infinite game afoot.

A game to include as many as possible for as long as possible.

You can wear yellow if you want.

I recommend it.

More importantly, you have already learned to read and write.

Something confined to the privileged not very long ago.

The privileged will always find something new to display.

But most of the life-changing things are now available to our creativity.

Time to play.

*From Kassia St. Clair’s The Secret Lives of Colour;
**Marcel Proust, quoted in Ben Hardy’s Personality Isn’t Permanent.

One by one, each sentence takes the stage. It says the very thing it comes into existence to say. Then it leaves the stage.*
Verlyn Klinkenborg

whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be your slave**
Jesus of Nazareth

Two counterintuitive things that came up this morning and have something in common.

Verlyn Klinkenborg encourages me to write in short sentences.

To allow them to say what they want to say and leave.

No celebrities here.

He tells me that I will use longer sentences in time.

These will basically be short sentences joined together.

It feels counterintuitive.

Surely complex things need long sentences?

Yet short sentences can deliver what is complex.

And servanthood can deliver life-in-all-its-fullness.

Humility enters through servanthood, sparking integrity and courage.

Gratitude also, growing wholeness and generosity.

And faithfulness, opening perseverance and wisdom.

No celebrities.

Do what we do and leave.

*From Verlyn Klinkenborg’s Several Short Sentences About Writing;
**Matthew 20:27)

This is what creativity serves. It endeavours to bring some of our hidden life to expression in order that we might come to see who we are.**
John O’Donohue

The purposes in the human mind are like deep water, but the intelligent will draw them out.^

You are soul-full, a deep mine of wonder and possibility.

Make something, and more ideas and the urge to make something more emerge.

Keep making and you are also exploring the depths of who you are … and can be.

What’s the thing you’ve just gotta make?

*I had Singin’ in the Rain in my head when I thought of the title, seventy years old this year, Gotta Make resonated with Gene Kelly’s character singing Gotta Dance. Enjoy.
**From John O’Donohue’s Divine Beauty;
^Proverbs 20:5.

The craft of questions, the craft of stories, the craft of the hands – all these are the making of something, and that something is soul. Anytime we feed soul, it guarantees increase.*
Clarissa Pinkola Estés

Of the any callings in the world, the invitation to the adventure of an awakened and full life is the most exhilarating. This is the dream of every heart. Yet most of us are lost or caught in forms of life that exile us from the life we dream of. Most people long to step onto the path of creative change that would awaken their lives to beauty and passion, deepens their contentment and allow their lives to make a difference.**
John O’Donohue

I can be larger than this.

I can be a full person, capable of beauty.

Soul-full.

To bring this whole into the parts of my activity.

Those who are my examples awaken me:

Some people wake us up.^

Deep called from deep.

Maybe I can be an awakener?:

The trance-teller calls on El duende, the wind the blows soul into the faces of listeners.*

Perhaps you can, too?

*From Clarissa Pinkola Estés’ Women Who Run With the Wolves;
**From John O’Donohue’s Divine Beauty;
^From gapingvoid’s blog: Make your impossible dream future reality.