And the message of all these stories, the secret our poets and philosophers have been trying to tell us for centuries, is that our longing is the great gateway to belonging.*
Susan Cain

As soon as humans had completed the evolutionary process, they found that a longing for transcendence was built into their condition.**
Karen Armstrong

Our lives came with an ample supply of
longing.
Longing never runs out;
We may bury it or misplace it,
But we’re never far away from our
inward longing –
Who is my True Self? – and our
outward lining –
What is my Contribution?

*Susan Cain’s Bittersweet;
**Karen Armstrong’s A Short History of Myth.

It is the limits that make it interesting, the limits that give us an edge to the box, something to leverage against. *
Seth Godin

*Seth Godin’s blog: Limitless.

Genre is a box, a set of boundaries, something the creative person can leverage against.  The limits of the genre are the place you can do your idiosyncratic work.*
Seth Godin

*Seth Godin’s The Practice.

we propose we need not time management but timelessness*
Maggie Berg and Barbara Seeber

*Maggie Berg and Barbara Seeber’s The Slow Professor.

To stay eager, to connect, to find interest in the everyday, to notice what everybody else overlooks – these are vital skills and noble goals.*
Rob Walker

*Rob Walker’s The Art of Noticing.

Play cultivates humility, for it requires us to treat things as they are rather than as we wish them to be.*
Ian Bogost

Play is part of developing trust. Play opens the heart and gives focus and delight, like an abacus did when we were young. Smartphone calculators? Not so much.**
Anne Lamott

We’re in life for the long haul,
Which can sound a little like gritting teeth,
But we have the wherewithal to play through life.
Humility – discovering our developing our
talents and abilities –
And gratitude – noticing and appreciating
our worlds,
Make it possible to play towards the generative qualities of
oneness, enoughness and perseverance.

*Ian Bogost’s Play Anything;
**Anne Lamott’s Almost Everything.

Classically, the understanding of life, the unfolding identity and creativity, the notion of growth and discovery were articulated through the metaphor of the journey.*
John O’Donohue

When we play, we engage fully and intensely with life and its contents. Play bores through boredom in order to reach the deep truth of ordinary things.**
Ian Bogost

May you never be left without a journey to embark upon,
They are all around.

*John O’Donohue’s Divine Beauty;
**Ian Bogost’s Play Anything.

Wealth among traditional people is measured by having enough to give away … our word for the giveaway, minidewak, means “they give from the heart” … In the dance of the give-away, remember that the earth is a gift that we must passion on, just as it came to us.*
Robin Wall Kimmerer

That which came as a gift to me,
I am seeking to pass on.
It may look a little different now –
I’ve mixed it and shaped it together with other gifts I’ve received
over the years –
And it’s here for you,
If you wish to receive it.

The starting place for change is accepting oneself and taking an interest in one’s inner world.**

*Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass;
**Edward Deci’s Why We Do What We Do.