I am a question-asker and a truth-seeker. I do not have much in the way of status in my life, nor security. I have been on quest, as it were, from the beginning.*
(M. C. Richards)

Morpheus offers Neo two pills: the blue will take him back to the fictional world of the the Matrix, the red will let him explore the truth and keep on exploring.

There is a false self and a true Self. M. C. Richards shares:

During one period, when people asked me what I did I was uncertain what to answer; I guessed I could say I taught literature, wrote poetry, and made pottery. What was my occupation? I finally gave up and said “Person.”*

Who am I?

Person.

What is my contribution?

…

(*From M. C. Richards’ Centering.)

What really sustains an audience over hundreds of hours is character complexity as it is revealed and changed.*
(Robert McKee)

Robert McKee writes that the emotional interest of an audience is held by character revelation and change. He may be thinking about the kind of TV drama that continues through hundred of episodes, but he could be pointing to what makes for an enriching life over decades:

Plotting is obviously important, but only to hold the characters up and keep the world around them in suspense. What really sustains an audience over hundreds of hours is character complexity as it is revealed and changed.*

The story happening out there is always important, but even more important is the story happening inside here. How are we growing and developing in response to what is happening to around and to us?

This prompts a third story, the one happening between the inside here and the outside there where we bring the power of our curiosity, imagination and creativity to bear:

Craft, as you may know, comes from the German word Kraft, meaning power or strength. As Emerson said, the law is: “Do the things, and you shall have power. But they who do to the thing, have no the powers.**

(*From Robert McKee‘s email: How to Hook and Hold a TV Audience.)
(**From M. C. Richards’ Centering.)

depth generates a life rich with productivity and meaning*
(Cal Newport)

What do you make? It’s possible that your job is to make decisions. If that’s what you do, what would it mean to do it more productively? With less hassle or drama?**
(Seth Godin)

Focus and depth produces new wisdom. Bernadette Jiwa came across this sign in a shop, perhaps expressing the antipathy of this:

While I was out walking this weekend I came across a sign on a shop door detailing the opening times. It read:

MONDAYS—probably
TUESDAYS-probably
WEDNESDAYS—probably not sure Not SURE!
THURSDAYS—OPEN
FRIDAYS—OPEN
SATURDAYS—OPEN
SUNDAYS—OPEN

MAY BE LATER FOR OPENING (SORRY! LIFELONG HABIT)
BUT TRYING FOR 3 PM-9 PM^

When we know what it is we must do, and sometimes equally what we must not do, and when we are deeply focused on this, then we open new knowledge and experience, which is new wisdom. This is the way of humility which leads to more.

I, for one, look forward to you sharing your discoveries.

(*From Cal Newport’s Deep Work.)
(**From Seth Godin’s blog: What do you make? I was reminded of the apostle Paul’s counsel on the gifts of the Spirit in Romans 12 which include things like ‘If your gift is […] giving, then give generously; if it is to lead, do it diligently […]’ – which sounds like focus and depth.)
(^From Bernadette Jiwa’s The Story of Telling blog: Promises Worth Keeping.)

In our eagerness to make an extraordinary impact, we forget it’s in ordinary moments that we leave the world better for our being here.*
(Bernadette Jiwa)

Seth Godin had actually written ‘The chance to move toward better can become a habit,’ but I’d misread his sentence as “The chance to move forward better can become a habit.”

“Forward” is certainly where we find ourselves as humans; we’re not in the same place we were 60 years ago never mind 70,000 years ago, and the majority of us would not choose to go back: think medical knowledge, gender issues, environmental knowledge … .

The people who captured the Judaeo-Christian creation story have God declaring that the world is good and has the potential of being very good, and this is in our hands.

We can continue to be curious, imagining and creating forward but, as my misreading of Godin had, this will need to be embodied in our habits.

When it comes to what we seek as humans, it’s been noted that we want to be autonomous, skilful at something and to live our lives for something greater than ourselves.** By reflecting on the possibilities for goodness in each of these, we open the possibilities for things becoming very good.

(*From Bernadette Jiwa’s blog The Story of Telling: Better For Your Being Here.)
(**Two sources are Robert Green’s Mastery, Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler’s Bold.)

So why didn’t you do it before? Because it’s easier to follow. Because it’s more comfortable to stay where we are. […] Next time, take the lead. Not because you have to, but because you can.*
(Seth Godin)

Imagination is one of humanity’s greatest qualities – without it the world would be a very dull place. Let the words of a book guide your imagination, and the spirit of adventure motivate you to set goals, push yourself, thrive in the face of hardship, and achieve epic feats.**
(Richard Branson)

Deep is an investment in the future …
Shallow is more comfortable than deep …
Hunger is expanded by reading …
Reading widely – and journaling …
Training imaginations and creating possibilities …
Living with the grain of the universe …
And the path with a heart.

(*From Seth Godin’s blog: “But we were comfortable.”)
(**From Richard Branson’s letter to young readers, in Maria Popova and Claudia Bedrick’s A Velocity of Being.)

At the same time the echo chamber around us magnifies our story, we also have the solace of knowing that truly, it’s us. Us together. The boat is really, really big and we’re all in it. This is a slog, and there will be another side. It is unevenly distributed, it’s a tragedy and it’s a challenge. But we’re in it together and with care and generosity, we can find perspective, possibility and hope.*
(Seth Godin)

In our eagerness to make an extraordinary impact, we forget it’s in ordinary moments that we leave the world better for our being here.**
(Bernadette Jiwa)

While reading these words, I was reminded of Dave Logan, John King and Haylee Fischer Wright’s book Tribal Leadership.

Basically, the three are identifying five tribes of people with different worldview and mantras (I heavily summarise these).

The first tribe declares “Life sucks.”

The second tribe claims “My life sucks, though yours may be okay.”

The third tribe celebrates “I’m great, though you’re not great.”

The fourth tribe choruses “We’re great, but they’re not great.

The fifth tribe proffers “Life is great and we face many challenges.”

We’re all being invited into the fifth tribe, though Gray, King and Fischer-Wright claim that we cannot skip tribes but have to move through the stages.

(*From Seth Godin’s blog: You’re surrounded.)
(**From Benadette Jiwa’s The Story of Telling: Better For Your Being Here.)

I wonder how long it was that Moses had been catching something glinting in the corner of his eye, ignoring it and getting with looking after his sheep?

How long was it before he decided to wander over and take a closer look?

And how long have you been ignoring the thing that’s been glinting, glimmering, from time to time in the corner of your eye?

It doesn’t have to be anything like a burning-but-not burning-bush, just an idea, or the thought to connect with someone, or a book to read … .

It’s likely not the thing itself – which is probably a portal or hyperlink to something, someone or somewhere else.

An Easter Day “prayer”: Lord, save us from a lack of curiosity!

The Law of the Vital Few: in many settings, 80 percent of a given effect is due to just 20 percent of the possible causes.*
(Cal Newport)

Books let us be trees, don’t you think. Seeing beyond the span of our own lives, reaching high into the sunlight and deep into the dark fertile soil of imagination.**
(Robin Wall Kimerer)

If we lived entirely in chronos time the maths make absolute sense. We can only pay attention to so much so we focus on what we do really well, especially when it has an 80% effect.

But life is not only chronos time, it is both chronos and kairos time – those deep-time moments that feel as if they are able to contain the whole universe.

When we journal, practising slow writing allows the entirety of our lives to come into view, who we are and what we bring in relation to ourselves, others and all things appear.

(*From Cal Newport’s Deep Work.)
(**From Robin Wall Kimerer‘s letter to you readers in Maria Popova and Claudia Bedrick’s A Velocity of Being.)

The artist rarely says, “I’d like to do less.” Instead, she wonders how to contribute more, because the very act of creativity is the point of the work.*
(Seth Godin)

Throughout history, skilled labourers have applied sophistication and scepticism to their encounters with new tools and their decisions about whether to adopt them.**
(Cal Newport)

Everything is story.

We can change our stories and our stories can change us:

Reading changed my life. Writing saved it.^

This blogpost is really a story about a consumer and a maker and the part new technology plays.

These are one person trying to make decisions about how to live their life. The big questions of the title are Who am I? and What is my contribution, or work?

In his blog about learning, Seth Godin continues:

It’s way easier to get someone to watch – a YouTube comic, a Netflix show, a movie – than it is to encourage them to do something. But it’s the doing that allows us to become our best selves, and it’s the doing that creates our future.*

There’s a fundamental change we can make to our story when it comes to new technologies which Cal Newport proffers. It is to begin thinking of the these as tools, for that is what they are. When we do this, we’re able to change our position from consuming to making.

Godin points out the pressure of reality we’re facing:

It turns out that learning isn’t in nearly as much demand as it could be. Our culture and our systems don’t push us to learn. They push us to conform and to consume instead.*

When technology controls us, we are de-skilled, but when we see tools instead of technology, we give ourselves opportunities skill ourselves up, to become artists.

Over thirty years ago, Bill Moyers was recording a series of conversations with mythologist Joseph Campbell:

Everything was taken care of because the story was there. Now the old story is not functioning. And we have not yet learned the new.^^

Campbell replies:

The relationship of myths to cosmology and sociology has got to wait for a man to be used to the new world that he is in. The world is different today from what it was fifty years ago.*^

When technology de-skills us, we dull our ability to respond to the two big questions and, so, lose our ability to create, to make, to produce our art.

Our new stories will be critical for how we understand and use the new technologies that are really tools, the difference being whether we serve them or they serve us.^*

(*From Seth Godin’s blog: But what could you learn instead?)
(**From Cal Newport’s Deep Work.)
(^From Judy Blume‘s letter to young readers, in Maria Popova and Claudia Bedrick’s A Velocity of Being.)
(^^Bill Moyers, from Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers’ The Power of Myth.)
(*^Joseph Campbell, from Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers’ The Power of Myth.)
(^*At this time of Covid-19 lockdown, I believe we’re seeing many of the positive benefits of these tools as they make it possible for us to keep in contact with loved ones, many to continue to do work and for some businesses to keep going.)

For […] material, institutional and cultural reasons, modern times are ill-equipped to meet the challenges posed by the demanding sort of cooperation. I’ll frame this weakness in a way that might seem initially odd: modern society is ‘de-skilling’ people in practising cooperation.*
(Richard Sennett)

A question formed as I listened to the contributions of those I met with for a virtual breakfast conversation about the future. We had been asked to share, from our different perspectives, something of the affects of Covid-19 and, coming from education, service, healthcare, government and businesses, there were many rich responses noting both challenge and possibility.

When identifying a de-skilling in cooperation, Richard Sennett points to an increasing income gap between those at the top and bottom of our societies, the siloing of workers and managements and leadership, the short-term nature of employment, and the homogenising rather than valuing of difference as being to blame for this.

Perhaps in these times, we are seeing a rapid re-skilling in cooperation and collaboration among many in our societies. When there is great need, we see how capable we are to do this.

What we are possibly seeing is the forming of communitas:** groups of people deeply cooperating around a shared goal. What we may also note, if this is what we are seeing, is how this kind of community, may dissipate once the need is met or the crisis is past.

What we have seen is just how complex and interwoven our lives are, with an outbreak of this form of coronovirus in Wuhan spreading so rapidly, making a nonsense of the very things Sennett identifies as de-skilling us.

The complexities will continue beyond the crisis and will require a level of cooperation that is increasingly sustainable amongst the human race.

The question, then, forming for me is:

Will there be a considerable minority of people who are significantly shaped by this experience, who will help us work towards a better future?

I guess we may only begin to answer this on a personal level:

Will I allow myself to be changed by these experiences so that my future will include working with others for a better world?

(*From Richard Sennett’s Together.)
(**From Victor Turner’s The Ritual Process.)