None of us knows everything there is to know.

Admitting this opens possibilities of discovering some new things and some new things about old things.

The Scientific Revolution began when some people admitted, “We do not know.”  Officially ignoramus, they began discovering all kinds of things that have changed our understanding of being human and our universe.

I don’t doubt that some will look back on us from a future two hundred years away and see those who admitted afresh that they are ignoramuses, opening new and new-old possibilities we cannot even imagine this morning.

One of the things that has changed is the way we can all be part of this journey with imagination and innovativeness.  There’s never been a better time not to know.

There are alternatives to journeying great distances for an adventure.

See more deeply.

Imagine the future and bring it back to the present.

The benefit is, adventures are there every day with those around us.

Or the gilded cage?

We used to have dreams and then they turned into something else.

Sometimes that something else turned into a nightmare and we wish we could wake up.

Stories come to our rescue.  Telling us this is not what you think, or this could be something else.

We’re surrounded by stories – movies, songs, poems, novels – but lack the most important one.  Our own.

We know a story is good when it’s dramatically unfolding, when the characters deepen and change, when they fight for what they hold dear.

Then it’s our turn, to fight the good fight for our dreams.

The understory is what’s really happening beneath the surface of a story.

All the best stories have them.

For us, it’s the purpose we’re striving to connect to.  On the surface of our lives there are unsatisfying answers.

But beneath, there are the questions that are about life itself.

Change is here to stay and it’s getting faster.

The faster things move, the more collisions are likely.

The fast has already disrupted the slow – the things we don’t believe we have time for any longer.

There is another way: disrupt the fast with the slow.

Take the time to know and develop who you are.  The same with what your contribution is while you are here.

It’s never one or the other, it’s always both.

This is stick or twist revisited.

Are you all you can be and therefore stick?

Or, are you more than you are now and so you twist?

Some people have an investment in you sticking.  It makes them look better.  The thing is, they are sticking too.  They need people around them not to push on because they can get away with what they always have done.

For the person who realises there is more to them than meets the eye – there always has been, it’s just a case of noticing more your talents, your passions, and your life experiences (which is about story)  – and explores this, they’ll discover they’re more adaptable, better learners than they thought, can come up with ideas that matter to them, and do something about these.

Life is open to everyone.

You have to notice your deep breaths, the beating of your heart.

Only you can reach for the path with a heart and take the next step.

Unless you have cultivated the distance and avert your gaze.

I came upon these two thoughts on opportunities, the first from Hugh Macleod, the second from Seth Godin:

‘We can only accomplish something when we feel strongly – and there is no feeling strongly without feeling fear.’*

‘[Opportunities] often come enshrouded with hassle, perceived risk and the need to overcome inertia.  It’s easier just to say no.  What happens if instead of ignoring opportunity you triage it?’**

The funny thing is, the more we say yes to the right opportunities the more opportunities present themselves.

Seizing the right opportunities builds personal capacity, as when we’re faithful to building something with who we are ad what we have, we build perseverance: the capacity to thrive in pressured situations.

Another dynamic being increased is our freedom to act, meaning when a great opportunity comes along we have taken the time to build our capability and we can act.

To act is to see abundance – we are more than enough, as opposed to scarcity – we are not enough.  A simple triage for whether we should take this opportunity is made up of experience, talent, and passion or dreams:

What are our important past experiences?
Do our talents offer themselves to this opportunity in the present?
Is this something we are passionate or dream about for the future?

All of these add up to; We do this because it matters.

(*From Hugh Macleod’s gapingvoid.)
(**From Seth Godin’s blog Opportunity Triage.)

“If Facebook were deleted, I’d be deleted. … All my memories would probably go along with it. … That is where I am.  It’s part of your life.  It’s a second you.”*

‘The question each of us has to ask is simple (but difficult): What can I become quite good at what’s really difficult for a computer to do one day soon?  How can I become so resilient, so human and such a linchpin that shifts in technology won’t be able to catch up.’**

I’ve pulled these two quotes together as they’re both about the impact technology has upon our lives – one negative and the other, positive.  Seth Godin argues that artificial intelligence nibbles away at the things we don’t really want to do, that who we are is formed outside of this.  We cannot allow ourselves to be formed within technology.  In the first quote, though, Audrey sees her online self as being different to her offline self, being the person she wants to be but isn’t.  Her words are full of angst.

Then this poem from John O’Donohue about our lives seeking their own shape after we are born:

‘Since then something within me
strains through closed pores
of words to get its echo out,
but becomes dumb again
when it hears their foreign voices
mangle outside what is tender within.’^

Perhaps Audrey’s ‘foreign voices mangle’ offline, making her run to her online ‘tender within.’

In Godin’s words I hear an echo of my hope that everyone has something they can ‘become quite good at.’  We do not find it by hiding with some wrong idea of self, hidden from others.  Rather it is in others we discover who we are.  O”Donohue continues:

‘I open like a swift breeze
over a meadow of clover
seamless, light and free;
helplessly, everything in me
rushes together towards
the dark life of your eyes.”^

‘Your little “I Am” becomes “We Are.”^^

Thereafter, when when we sit still with ourselves, we perhaps will notice this charge of excitement within (literally: to set in motion) and not the dull ache of angst.  In noticing this, it becomes stronger.  This is our infinity.  I’ve borrowed this word from Lillian Lieber’s book on science and mathematics Infinity: Beyond the Beyond the Beyond for exploring the unlimited nature of our lives and the contributions that emerge.

Lieber points to the need for facts (S), intuition (A), and reason (M).  Capitalisation of SAM indicates the fullness of each.  A SAM life is what we must aim for, not Sam, sAm, saM, SAm, sAM, or SaM, so:

“The yearning for infinity, for immortality, is an intuitive yearning (“A”): we look for support for it in the physical world (“S”), we try to reason about it (“M”) – but only when we turn the full light of SAM upon it are we able to make genuine progress in considering infinity.”*^

This is our universe of possibility.

(*Sixteen year old Audrey, quoted in Sherry Turkle’s Alone Together.)
(*From Seth Godin’s blog post 23 Things Artificially Intelligent Computers Can Do Better/Faster Cheaper Than You Can.)
(^From John O’Donohue’s Echoes of Memory: Arrival.)
(^^From Richard Rohr’s The Naked Now.)
(*^Lillian Lieber, quoted in Maria Popova’s BrainPickings.)

This is about what you see and others do not, and how some of our finest moments occur in the most surprising places.

We may see the same things as others but see more.  Someone was sharing with me today about how she seeing different things in the lives of the people she worked with, things her colleagues didn’t see.

Our seeing connects us with the world of myths and dreams, mythologist Joseph Campbell offering a helpful description for these:

‘The myth is the public dream and the dream is the private myth.’*

It’s in the dynamic relationship between these two that change and transformation take place.

But be careful about how we see because seeing leads to actioning: the place where dreams and myths collide.  Lillian Leiber warns that what we see (facts), must be matched by equal intuition (heart) and reason (mind).

What will we do?  We might wish we could close our eyes.

Action is speculative.  It has no idea whether it will succeed or not.  It’s in understanding these things as myth, though, that we see the implications of what we see and what we do:

‘[Visionaries have] moved out of the society that would have protected them, and ito the dark forest, into the world of fire, of original experience.  Original experience has not been interpreted by you, and so you’ve got to work out your life for yourself.  Either you can take it or you can’t.  You don’t have to go far off the entered path to find yourself in difficult situations.  The courage to face the trials and possibilities into the field of interpreted experience for other people to experience – that is the hero’s deed.’*

It can be something large or something small but to act on what we see will likely bring resistance and even opposition:

‘Every day, employees follow processes and rules that were designed for a time when the world worked differently.  Many cultures are risk-averse.  Those who wish to change are challenged, undermined or under-appreciated by those who want to hold onto the past.  But the world has changed.  Whether you like it or not.’^

When something you see turns into a dream, or private myth, and you move this into the public world through action, though you may have no idea what you are doing, then, in the strictest sense of the term, you are being heroic.   Just remember that.

(*From Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers’ The Power of Myth.)
(**From Brian Solus and gapingvoid’s 10 Reasons Your Culture is Failing and New Insights on How to Fix It.)