If you’re simply following [shortcuts] you probably won’t get anywhere interesting. It’s the detours that pay off.*
Seth Godin

On the other path [before Hercules] stood a sterner goddess in a pure white robe. She made a quieter call. She promised no rewards except those that came as a result of hard work. It would be a long journey, she said. There would be sacrifice. There would be scary moments. But it was a journey fit for a god. It would make him the person his ancestors meant him to be.**
Ryan Holiday

After arising and before the work begins,
I take a detour,
I have for many years now,
Into a journal and reading and doodling and
discovery and wonder and,
I hope,
A little personal development
along the way.

And some detours can last a lifetime:
And, some detours can turn into a lifetime.

Seth Godin’s blog: Actual shortcuts often appear to be detours;
Ryan Holiday’s Discipline is Destiny.

We are a limited amount of time. That is how completely our limited time defines us.*
Oliver Burkeman

Man and society are resurrected every moment in the act of hope and faith in the here and now; every act of love, of awareness, of compassion is resurrection; every act of sloth, of greed, of selfishness is death.**
Erich Fromm

Moments of faith and love are
the best of all for
bringing time back to life –
That is, for
bringing us back to life;
Through serving others,
We are learning to live to the
fullness of our being and our becoming –
Perhaps even resurrected to some higher state:
It is a constant effort and hard work –
and inexplicably life-affirming –
to honour who you are, what you believe,
and why you are here.^

*Oliver Burkeman’s Four Thousand Weeks;
**Erich Fromm’s The Revolution of Hope;
^Elle Luna’s The Crossroads of Should and Must.

More often than not, we find ourselves in situations where we don’t know. That’s a given … Acknowledging it is a sign of confidence and awareness.*
Seth Godin

First, pay close, foolish, even absurd attention to things. Then allow their structure, form, and nature to set the limits for the experiences you derive from them. By refusing to ask what could be different, and instead allowing what is present to guide us, we create new space.**
Ian Bogost

To not know is to know more,
Both about oneself and about the situation;
Now we can find out more,
And we may grow in the process –
Instead of trying to fit this thing, this person, this circumstance
into our present understanding,
We allow the unknown to be our teacher, creating
new spaces and possibilities.

The accusation is that this will take too long, and
we continue to hurry three steps forward and hobble two steps back,
Or worse,
But not knowing is a skill to develop, and
the more we use our ability, the
faster it will be, and
the more alive and human we shall be:
Only because
we do not know everything and
because we cannot control the future is it possible
to live and be human.^

It doesn’t matter whether we consider ourselves “secular” or “religious”: in some way we’re all reaching for the heavens.^^

*Seth Godin’s blog: “I don’t know”;
**Ian Bogost’s Play Anything;
^Iona Heath, from Bill Sharpe’s Three Horizons;
^^Susan Cain’s Bittersweet.

The revolutionary force in this century is the awakening of a deep generative human capacity – the I-in-now.*
Otto Scharmer

But what I was trying to say is that we may ultimately find that, to our surprise, our creative endeavours are not the defining element of our lives. They are perhaps a means to an end. That’s what I’m trying to find out.**
Nick Cave

The other capacities are
I-in-me – when I am at the centre of my own world and views,
I-in-you – when I step out of my story and step into your story in order to serve,
I-in-us – when we serve each other, and the greater world:
If you have come here to help me,
you are wasting your time.
But if you have come because your liberation
is bound up with mine,
then let us work together.^

I-in-now – together we serve what is wanting to emerge,
The future that is wanting to come into being;
In such a place as this,
None of us are the final product,
We are all becoming,
And in the end,
This “I” may be our most beautiful achievement.

*Otto Scharmer’s Theory U;
**Nick Cave and Seán O’Hagan’s Faith, Hope and Carnage;
^Lilla Watson, from Rohit Bharhava and Jennifer Brown’s Beyond Diversity.

And when playing a game, the question is not how to overcome that structure, but how to subject oneself to it … the play is in the thing not in us.*
Ian Bogost

The hunger will give you everything. And it will take from you everything. It will cost you your life and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it. But knowing this, of course, is what sets you free.**
Hugh Macleod

Actually, you did sign up for this,
It’s the tough reality that follows the
inciting imagination;
Your desire to pursue your must requires deep immersion,
When we want to hold back, we must lean in
with our skills, knowledge, and heart –
Counterintuitively, this forward, galloping tilt is what brings us
freedom, as Dan Ariely personally testifies:
My dark sense of helplessness receded a little.
In its place,
like a glimmer of light,
was an old friend: curiosity. After all,
I’m a social scientist.^

There will be more to learn, more enabling along the way,
But first of all you must trust what brought you here:
If it’s your truth,
you can’t not do it, and
that knowledge
carries you through.^^

*Ian Bogost’s Play Anything;
**Hugh Macleod’s Evil Plans;
^Dan Ariely’s Misbelief;
^^Parker Palmer, from Krista Tippett’s Becoming Wise.

sui géneris (a) a class alone, unique, peculiar

If you keep telling people who they are, who their best selves are, if you keep reminding them of their true identity, there’s a good chance they’ll figure out what to do.*
Rob Bell

You get to decide your uniqueness,
Beyond,
More than,
Biology, sociology and psychology:
Thus Karl Jaspers calls the being of man a
‘deciding’ being,
not something that simply ‘is’ but something
that first decides ‘what it is.’**

We are discerning this today
more comprehensively than ever, but, perhaps,
There is more understanding to come, helping us to
avoid jumping from one labeled box into another;
And who we are is never to be separated from
what we do, the
unique and peculiar beauty each person
brings into the world.

*Rob Bell’s What is the Bible?;
**Viktor Frankl’s The Doctor and the Soul.

Must needs solitude.*
Elle Luna

Alone is my before and after.

*Elle Luna’s The Crossroads of Should and Must.

You have your own stories, the dramatic and more ordinary moments where what has gone wrong becomes an opening to more of yourself and part of your gift to the world. This is the beginning of wisdom.*
Krista Tippett

I’m really glad it didn’t work;
I’d been trying for sixteen years in three different places, but,
finally,
I stopped the striving –
Maybe, if I’d have got it to work, I would be still in that role,
But that would be a shame, because when I embraced getting it wrong, I was
set upon a path that has carried me to
the most fulfilling service I have been able to make, and the path
continues to unfold.

*Krista Tippett’s Becoming Wise.

Worldly limitations impose a new and welcome humility, for they force us to treat things as they are rather than as we wish them to be … Every playground has two basic properties, which are two sides of the same coin: boundaries and contents.*
Ian Bogost

Poetry takes something that we know already and turns it into something new.**
T. S. Eliot

When there are no boundaries.

Limitations make life richer –
When we see something for what it truly is, then
we can begin to play, to use our imagination, to
make something different, so
we pay humble attention:
Our life experience will equal
what we pay attention to.^

As a player, we may feel that what we do
is quite ordinary, but our everyday and obvious
may appear to others as freshness and originality,
Non-obvious and hopeful.

We begin the play by embracing the limitations, including
our own.

*Ian Bogost’s Play Anything;
**Madeleine L’Engle’s Walking on Water;
^William James, from Rob Walker’s The Art of Noticing.

Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.*
Mary Oliver

There are things that we avoid looking at too closely. If we looked, really saw what was happening, we’d have to change our minds, admit we were mistaken, refactor our priorities or take action.**
Seth Godin

See deeply,
Be wowed more often,
Have something important to share;
Mary and Seth are likely thinking of
a superabundance of subjects
and objects,
In this moment, I’m pondering the
interaction we have with each other.

*Rob Walker’s The Art of Noticing;
**Seth Godin’s blog: Avert your eyes.