Gifts create connection and possibility, but not all gifts have monetary value. In fact, some of the most important gifts involve time, effort and care instead.*
(Seth Godin)

Gratitude, gladness, gifts, generosity.

Zing is the word I enjoy using to describe each person’s unique energy connecting them with the infinite game that life is meant to be; these 4 Gs help us get there:

Gratitude for what we have and all that is around us:

Ideas do not belong to people. Ideas live in the world as we do. We discover certain ideas at certain times.**

Gladness that comes from a deep integration of these.

Every morning I is going out and snitching new dreams to put in my bottles.^

Gifts being the things that emerge from the depths of gratitude and gladness in our lives, with the ultimate gift being ourselves:

“If you is really wanting to know what I am doing in your village,” the BFG said, “I is loosing a dream into the bedroom of those children. […] I is a dream-blowing giant”^

Here is generosity, the life that cannot help but give.

Go play.

(*From Seth Godin’s blog: Generous isn’t always the same as free.)
(**From M. C. Richard’s Centering.)
(^The Big Friendly Giant in Roald Dahl’s The BFG.)

Practice alone won’t make us perfect. Progress happens when we make time for thinking as well as doing.*
(Bernadette Jiwa)

I’m convinced that I haven’t yet reached my full value-producing potential […] culling the shallow and painstakingly cultivating the intensity of my depth. […] A deep life is a good life.**
(Cal Newport)

We can be so busy and hurried that we have no time to think deeply.

Alan Lightman writes to young readers he imagines to be reading his letter in the year 2114:

Keep in mind that information is not the same as knowledge. You still need to think about what you are learning and what it means. To do that, you will need to turn off your neurochip from time to time. It is valuable to disconnect and listen to your own mind think.^

Through reflection, or thinking, we make information personal, it becomes knowledge. Books are great ways of stepping into the worlds of others, meeting the writers as well as the thoughts they’re sharing:

Reading is for the brave among us. It teaches us how to love people we don’t know and will probably never meet. It teaches us that we too deserve that same sort of love. That faith is, in fact, the work of being a fully realised person.^^

Four things to help us here, then:

Alan Lightman’s suggestion to first unplug and disconnect;

Thomas Page McBee’s encouragement to read (in order to enter the worlds of others);

Bernadette Jiwa’s insight of taking time to then reflect (journaling is a great way); and,

Cal Newport’s urging to pursue the deepest life we can.

Everything then becomes more personal.

(*From Bernadette Jiwa’s blog The Story of Telling: The Power of Reflective Practice.)
(**From Cal Newport’s Deep Work.)
(^From Alan Lightman’s letter to young readers included in Maria Popova and Claudia Bedrick’s A Velocity of Being.)
(^^From Thomas Page McBee’s letter to young readers included in Maria Popova and Claudia Bedrick’s A Velocity of Being.)

“Sometimes I worry you’ll all realise I’m ordinary,” said the boy. “Love doesn’t need you to be extraordinary,” said the mole.*

When we do not protect with great care your own inner mystery, we will never be able to form a community. It is this inner mystery that attracts us to each other and allows us to establish friendship and develop lasting relationships.**
(Henri Nouwen)

We can be tempted to reinvent ourselves as extraordinary, a movement from the eco – the true Self found in our connectedness to all things – to ego – the false self, being more or less than who we are through disconnection. These are extremes; we’re usually somewhere along the continuum.

Into my mind slipped Henri Nouwen’s Reaching Out, which I read eleven years ago, and yet the book’s “three movements” have remained with me: from loneliness to solitude, from hostility to hospitality and from illusion to prayer.

When Nouwen writes about our inner mystery I am also thinking of Joseph Campbell‘s personal myth, a story we need to shape that contains who we are – and who we are becoming.

This connects with the first question my work is wrapped around: Who am I?

Loneliness can be not knowing this story. Solitude is finding it, content with our own company. Loneliness can mean not wanting to be left alone with ourselves.

Without this story, we struggle to shape the second myth or story Campbell believes we need: the societal myth, or how we connect with others:

In the solitude of the heart we can truly listen to the pains of the world because there we can recognise them not as strange an unfamiliar pains, but as pains that are indeed our own.**

We discover there’s something we can bring to others out of the rich story of our innermost mystery.

This connects with the second question my work is wrapped around: What is my contribution (work)?

And so we do not approach one another with the hostility of suspicion, cynicism and competition, but with hospitality, making a place in ourself for the other – not ignoring, not debating to win the argument, not simply opening a dialogue, but fostering the kind of generative dialogues in which the emerging possibility is one unimagined by either side.

Every guest brings a gift into our lives, even though they may not know it.

But to be such a host we have to first of all be at home in our own house.**

Thus, the third movement emerges necessarily from the second:

When we do not enter into that inner field of tension where the movement from illusion to prayer takes place, your solitude and hospitality easily lose their depth. And then, instead of being essential to our spiritual life, they become pious ornaments of a morally respectable existence.**

Another word for prayer may be faith, the action of a life convinced of something greater or more important than itself, even though it means moving into deep uncertainty and scarce guarantee.

When we are prepared to give up on extraordinary and move into solitude to know ourselves, to move into hospitality and connect with all things, and move into faith and give expression to these, we will find there is a very rich fullness to our ordinariness.

(*From Charlie Mackesy’s The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse.)
(**From Henri Nouwen’s Reaching Out.)

The things we say and the projects we do are our clips. Taken together, they are our contribution. If you don’t want to be judged by a clip of something you said or did, the path is pretty clear. The best resumé says, “please judge me by my clips.”*
(Seth Godin)

The imagination can create the future only if its products are brought over into the real. The bestowal of work completes the act of imagination.**
(Lewis Hyde)

I confess I had to look up what a clip is, and I’m guessing it’s this, not these.

There’s the good, the bad and the ugly inside all of us and they make it to the outside in a plethora of ways.

In her recommendations for good writing habits, Lydia Davis encourages observation:

Take notes regularly.^

What should be take notes on?

Observe your own activity […] your own feelings […] the behaviour of others, both animal and human […] the weather, and be specific […] other types of behaviour, including that of municipalities*^

I include these words not because we are all to be writers, but because we need to be better observers of our own lives, not only to see when we are being bad or ugly, and to stop, but when we are being good and don’t notice it so that we can repeat it.

I wonder whether, if what we get to noticing is actually telling us a lot about our energy:

To be fully engaged, we must be physically energised, emotionally connected, mentally focused and spiritually aligned with a purpose beyond our immediate self-interest.^^

The last is the biggy for me because it ensures that the bad and the ugly cannot triumph.

Bringing these thoughts together, notice when you are most energised: what are you doing?, why are you doing it”, who are you doing it with or for? and when are you doing it (i.e., are you starting or finishing something?)? Do more of these things and you are likely being your good self, and you’ll also have enough energy to do things you don’t particularly like doing, too.

(*From Seth Godin’s blog: You are your clips.)
(**From Lewis Hyde’s The Gift.)
(^From Literary Hub’s article: Lydia Davis: Ten of My Recommendations for Good Writing Habits.)
(^^From Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz’s The Power of Full Engagement.)

To follow your gift is a calling to a wonderful adventure of discovery. Some of the deepest longings in you is the voice of your gift. The gift calls you to embrace it, not to be afraid of it.*
(John O’Donohue)

The problem with perfect is that when you fail, you have none of the more flexible human traits to fall back on.**
(Seth Godin)

It’s not just about being invited – we’re all invited – but it’s how we turn up.

It’s like we’ve all been given a map, but it’s blank and we’re the cartographers.

We have all this territory to explore. Some of our discoveries we’ll want to include as key features on these personal maps and others ,we’ll leave out, or possibly include them but as warnings to ourselves.

We’ll get lost a lot and that’s okay because these can be times that are the most helpful, energising and defining to us.

Just make sure that on your map you don’t go back and forth along the same route and impress this upon your map in some deep rut.

(*From John O’Donohue’s Eternal Echoes.)
(**From Seth Godin’s blog: What do you aspire to be?)

Thank you so much for they journey into another world. Could we please do it again, soon?*
(The girl with the green eyes)

Art is a leap into the void, a chance to give birth to your genius where there was no magic before.
(Seth Godin)

There are those who want to use time against us.

It’s not time.

It is time.

Now.

Later.

You missed your time.

Time up.

We haven’t got time for that.

These are expressions of finite time, but there is also infinite time with characteristics of including as many as possible for as long as possible, playing with time, creating time, opening up moments of time.

The girl with the green eyes was a Jewish child secretly being taught by Helen Fagin in a Polish ghetto in the World War II. Fagin decided, this would be more than ‘dry information but hope,’* telling the children stories that were banned by the Nazis.^

Fagin’s is an extreme story about how we must question time, play with time, rail against time, in order to bring what we need most. It is unlikely we’ll have to face such severe times as Helen Fagin and her class of children, yet there comes a time when each of us must do what we must do, meeting our need and those of others, to bring our art, to make some magic happen where there was no magic before.

Fagin reflects on the reading of those stories in a description that feels to be an uncovering of infinite time:

There are times when dreams sustain us more than facts. To read a book and surrender to a story is to keep our very humanity alive.*

(Only four out of twenty-two children from Fagin’s class survived the Holocaust; the girl with the green eyes was one of these. The two would find each other many years later and they would meet agin in New York.)

(*The girl with the free eyes, from Helen Fagin’s letter to young readers: A Velocity of Being by Maria Popova and Claudia Bedrick.)
(**From Seth Godin’s The Icarus Deception.)
(^”Telling” because these books were clandestinely circulated within a trusted circle of people who had to read them in the night after which they had to be moved on.

Ekere is the mother of three galaxies who look like daughters.*
(Maria Popova and Claudia Bedrick)

I love this description for Mariahadessa Ekere Tallie‘s children.

Tallie teaches us to value everyone in her letter to young readers:

Books let us know we’re not the centre of the universe; the universe has many centres.**

When Walter Benjamin writes about how people can be ‘an expert in some minor matter,’^ I like to think he’s also revealing galaxies of expertise. We all know something others don’t. Be prepared for wonder.

Benjamin’s concern is the nature of original art and its reproduction, and he catches my attention when he writes about cultic and display values:

Works of art are received and appreciated with different points of emphasis, two of which stand out as being poles of each other. In one case the emphasis is on the work’s cultic value; in the other its display value.^

The cultic value belongs in its hiddenness or privacy of its creator, the display value is what it means for others when it becomes public.

This leads me to compare the cultic value to Joseph Campbell’s personal myth and the display value to the social myth. Campbell claims these to be the two most important myths, or stories, we each need.

When it comes to our lives, there is the story we tell ourselves and hold ourselves to and there is the representation of this story we are happy and relaxed to share with others. An example might be this post which is my display story but behind it lies my cultic journaling.

I mustn’t let the display value mess with the cultic value which is an unravelling adventure when it is free from the judgement of others.

I leave the closing words to Ekere Tallie, reminding you there is a galaxy within you to discover and to express:

Keep asking questions. Colour outside the lines. Draw your own maps. Create your own legends.**

(*From Maria Popova and Claudia Bedrick’s A Velocity of Being.)
(**Mariahadessa Ekere Tallie in her letter to young readers from Maria Popova and Claudia Bedrick’s A Velocity of Being.)
(^From Walter Benjamin’s The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.)

As your muscles deteriorate, your brain is also deteriorating. Other malign changes occur too – in personality, in mood, in the very structure of the brain. And yet we have this wonderful in-built correction mechanism, a form of self-administered medicine, one without adverse events: movement.**
(Shane O’Mara)

We all want big changes, but the best way to achieve this is to start small. Give Love, Take Pride.^
(Hugh Macleod)

Beyond imagining a possibility and being energised about it, when we put some action into it, we’re not only making something invisible visible but we’re also affecting change within ourselves at many levels.

When you think about it, that’s a big and wonderful thing. Just think about what we’ll imagine next.

It’s about turning up to what really matters^^ to us and let the small things accumulate.

There’s never been a more opportune moment in history to explore this, including it’s never too late for any of us to begin.

(*The music playing in my head to the doodle is Elton John’s Sorry Seems To Be the Hardest Word.)
(**From Shane O’Mara’s In Praise of Walking.)
(^From gapingvoid’s blog: Celebrate small wins.)
(^^As in where our deepest joy meets the world’s deepest need – thank you to Frederick Buechner for that wonderful thought.)

Today. We only get it once. Why waste it? We can spend it in fear, or we can create possibility for the next person. […] It only takes a day to make change happen. The ocean is made of drops.*
(Seth Godin)

The more people have to attend to, the harder it is to get their attention. Attention is a precious resource. […] What if instead of showing up to get attention, we showed up to give it, without expectation? Imagine the resources we could build if we spent the majority of our time attending to how we could help instead of trying to be seen.**
(Bernadette Jiwa)

Why sleep through a day, download another yesterday, autopilot the hours away … then wonder, How did I get here?^

Each day is full of wonder waiting to be discovered, knowledge to enrich our experiences and those of others. Attention behaves like a muscle: it can be developed. Each person’s attention has its own natural curiosities and interests, and these need to be explored.

I have my awakeners to all of this. People like Seth Godin and Bernadette Jiwa are my regulars and then their are “guests” like Brian Eno:

The enemy of creative work is boredom, actually […]. And the friend is alertness. Now I think that what makes you alert is to be faced by a situation that is beyond you control so you have to be watching it very carefully to see how it unfolds, to be able to stay on top of it. That kind of alertness is exciting.^^

Not only is boredom the enemy of creative work and the enriched life, so is speed. I came across Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz first of all in their book On Form, a gift from a friend; I am now just beginning to read their book The Power of Full Engagement – here’s how they begin:

We live in digital time. Our rhythms are rushed, rapid fire and relentless, our days carved up into bits and bytes. We celebrate breadth rather than depth, quick reaction more than considered reflection. We skim across the surface, alighting for brief moments at dozens of destinations but rarely remaining for long at any one. We race through our lives either passing to consider who we really want to be or where we really want to go.*^

Their point will be: time is not our most precious resource but energy.

Alertness and attention are all about aligning our lives with our energy.

Have fun exploring this.

(*From Seth Godin’s blog: Today.)
(**From The Story of Telling blog: Giving Attention Vs. Getting Attention.)
(^In the UK, the triangular road-sign is one of warning.)
(^^Brian Eno, quoted in Tim Harford’s Messy.)
(*^From Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz’s The Power of Full Engagement.)

There is but one infinite game.*
(James Carse)

a city is composed of different kinds of men; similar people cannot bring a city into existence**
(Aristotle)

Once upon a time, a farmer would sow seeds, harvest the crops, transport them to market and be the salesperson to those passing their stall. Today there’s a lot more people involved. As John Green was eating his broccoli, he found himself thinking about all the people who made it possible to get that vegetable onto his plate.

As we figure out how to work through the pandemic Covid19, we realise how working together will be essential – even when it means we stop seeing each other in the ways we have taken for granted.

We are appreciating not only our need to connect but also our desire to be connected – everything is connection:

Reading didn’t just offer escape; it offered connection.^

We have evolved to walk together, and social walking is demonstrative: it sends signals to others about our shared intentions and collective goals.^^

A good conversation is a constant stream of unexpected responses.*^

Here are three comments on connection I happened to come upon in my reading this morning: reading to find ourselves through the words of others, walking in rhythm with others and a conversation akin to a dance in which the choreography appears as we step out together.

If James Carse is right and there’s only one infinite game – in which we are all included and there is no single goal and we get to change the rules to include everyone for as long as possible – then there can be no “them” and “us.”

Then Aristotle’s words come to us as a lively challenge because although there is one game we are all different and yet our cities are evidence of our willingness to connect and work together.

Through the weeks and months ahead I believe we’ll see many ways being imagined for connecting and being together. When we are finally able to to be together in person once again, together will be quite different, hopefully altering us at a genetic level.

One way to connect, for those having to work at home, has been made available by Seth Godin. I’ve enrolled and look forward to connecting with people alongside the other ways and means.

(*From James Carse’s book Finite and Infinite Games.)
(**Aristotle, quoted in Richard Sennett’s Together.)
(^Emily Levine in her letter to young readers from Maria Popova and Claudia Bedrick’s A Velocity of Being.)
(^^From Shane O’Mara’s In Praise of Walking.)
(*^From Tim Harford’s Messy.)