Sooner or later we must distinguish between what we are not and what we are. We must accept the fact that we are not what we would like to be. We must cast off our false, exterior self like the cheap and showy garment it is … We must find our real self, in all its elemental poverty, but also in its great and very simple dignity … .*
Thomas Merton

To know yourself is, above all, to know what one lacks. It is to measure oneself against Truth, and not the other way around. The first product of self-knowledge is humility.*
Brother Dave

The road continues
if you want it to;
You are understanding more of who
you are not and
what you do not have –
You are incomplete as the world measures it –
But you find yourself on an unfolding path of possibility,
Now that you have shed who you are not and
do not dwell on what you do not have.

There are many places to begin –
Here is one:
Name what you are most curious about and
energised by;
Identify those things in your life which
obstruct these, or don’t align:
What can you shed?

Better begins with each of us, but it evaporates when we settle for less. Settling is rarely intentional, instead it happens when we focus on other things.**

*Ian Morgan Cron’s The Road Back to You;
**Seth Godin’s blog: Can’t wait.

In the light of existential analysis there is no such thing as a generally valid and universally binding task.*
Viktor Frankl

It’s not about finding the work you love as much as it is finding a set of problems you like to solve and are able to get re-energised for.**
Gabe Anderson

Silently listening is the universe,
Waiting for what we shall devise for
our meaning and purpose as:
emergent beings in the flow of life,
part of evolution;^
We have often found a problem to be
a good place to begin –
Such discoveries tend to then develop a life of their own.

*Viktor Frankl’s The Doctor and the Soul;
**Gabe Anderson’s blog: Finding Your Problems;
^Paul Gilbert’s The Compassionate Mind.

To have a firm persuasion in our work – to feel that what we do is right for ourselves and good for the world at the exactly same time – is one of the great triumphs of human existence.*
David Whyte

A thing without opposition ipso facto does not exist … existence lies in opposition.**
C. S. Peirce

You and I,
We need some opposition,
Something that pushes against and riles us
so that we must do something about it.

For me, William Blake‘s “firm persuasion” echoes
Frederick Buechner‘s discovering our purpose in life
where our deepest joy meets the world’s greatest need –
A most wonderful result from the human economy of creativeness,

Of course, life also contains the dimming of vision, the cooling of fervour, or
feeling overwhelmed by the opposition, though taking a little time
each day to realign and renew perspective – perhaps in journaling or
a walking exercise, can lead us into our purpose, which may be nothing short of transcendent at times.

A fascinating paradox is that most transcendent experiences are completely ego-free. In the moment, we lose track of our bodies, we lose track of our selves.^

*David Whyte’s Crossing the Unknown Sea;
**Austin Kleon’s blog: Iain Gilchrist on the coincidence of opposites;
^Alan Lightman’s The Transcendent Brain.

Life is not linear. When you follow your own true north you create new opportunities, meet different people, have different experiences and create a different life.*
Ken Robinson

The soul is never at home in the social world that we inhabit. It is too large for our contained, managed lives.**
John O’Donohue

The words I gathered this morning took me back to the question
I have mentioned on a number of occasions,
Asked by my friend and mentor Alex:
What does it mean to you to be human?

It must be fifteen or sixteen years since Alex asked this,
And my answer has remained the same –
It is my answer, yours will be uniquely yours:
To be human is to be creative, generous, and enjoying.

To be generous with what I create, and, as a result of
creativity and generosity, to find
an enjoyable life –
A slow journey towards my true self.

You may wish that I had not shared this question,
To know is to have to do something about it,
Or to bury it:
What, then, does it mean to you to be human?

*Ken Robinson’s Out of Our Minds;
**John O’Donohue’s Divine Beauty.

It’s a Rorschach test. It’s all a Rorschach test.*
Anne Lamott

It is the hidden in our work that always holds the treasure. A life dedicated to the goodness in work is a life making visible all the rich invisible seams of existence hidden from others. Good work is grateful surprise.**
David Whyte

I find meaning where another doesn’t,
They find meaning where I am unable to –
It’s what gets us up in the morning, keeps us going
through difficult times, and, when shared,
Makes a difference to one another,
the invisible becoming visible;
Meaning isn’t with the the courier, due to be delivered between 10:57-12:57,
It arrives with the hard work and discipline of noticing what we notice.

*Anne Lamott’s Dusk Night Dawn;
**David Whyte’s Crossing the Unknown Sea.

If we go down to ourselves, we find that we possess
exactly what we desire.*
Simone Weil

*John O’Donohue’s Divine Beauty.

Things designed by people without skin in the game tend to grow in complication (before their final collapse).*
Nassim Taleb

*Nassim Taleb’s Skin In the Game.

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 a quest, as it were, from the beginning.*
M. C. Richards

The wandering flâneur is a more open spirit, I would say, then the purposive wayfarer, because his or her knowledge of places and people can expand in unforeseen ways.**
Richard Sennett

You can never ask too many questions or
seek too much truth in your zest for life,
Though the way we go about it matters –
Around asking questions, James Clear suggests being pleasant and
turning up daily, which sounds like good advice;^
There are at least two ways to go about this:
With focus and purpose, or
with wandering and openness –
Your particular creativity will lead you into one or the other.

We’re all creative, and
it doesn’t take long to identify how –
Such is my finding from almost twenty years of exploring these things with
a diversity of people;
As educationalist Sir Ken Robinson wrote:
When people say to me that they are not creative,
I assume that they just haven’t learnt what is involved.^^

And what are we doing when asking questions and seeking truth
if not learning?

*M. C. Richards’ Centering;
**Richard Sennett’s Building and Dwelling;
^James Clear’s 3-2-1 Thursday newsletter;
^^Ken Robinson’s Out of Our Minds.

Our knowledge, if we all it to be transformed within us, turns into capacity for life-serving human deeds.*
M. C. Richards

And there it is again: the oldest problem, the deepest dream – the pain of separation, the desire for reunion.**
Susan Cain

With knowledge comes responsibility, and this, in turn,
Produces wisdom, which is shaded with selfless and generous
activeness;
This also means that it is bittersweet in nature,
A denying of ourselves in order to possess what we want most of all –
Our separation and reunion –
The fullness of life existing in the mission produced not through freedom from, but in
freedom to, as Viktor Frankl suggests:
Having such a task makes the person irreplaceable
and gives his life the value of uniqueness.^

*M. C. Richards’ Centering;
**Susan Cain’s Bittersweet;
^Viktor Frankl’s The Doctor and the Soul.

Life on its own, without art to shape it, leaves you in confusion and chaos, but well-told stories have the power to harmonise what you know with what you feel. Story is a vehicle that carries us on our search for reality, our best effort to make sense out of the anarchy of existence.*
Robert McKee

I want to facilitate, in some small way, a mutual journey toward meaning; to decrease the dimensions of our emptiness and draw us closer to love and to beauty … This common project – to improve matters – is available to all of us, at every moment, and in a multitude of ways, and exists in the smallest kindness, the most rudimentary act of tolerance, or in the simplest generosity.**
Nick Cave

We are all artists with some
good contribution to bring into the world, to make things better,
Often in some small, but critical way, but then the
resistance appears, sometimes
lasting for years;
This is when our alter ego comes to our assistance.

Think of it as simply being the name we give to
all our values, energies, and talents –
This may sound like we’re playing at it, and we’re right,
But not in the way we think because
play helps to set free the heroic and artistic self trapped within
our fears and doubts:
And here’s a reminder that
playfulness doesn’t stop at eight years of age;
it’s a pathway to handling life with
more grace.^

*Robert McKee’s newsletter: The Power of Story;
**Nick Cave’s The Red Hand File’s blog: #200;
^Todd Herman’s The Alter Ego Effect.