Each of us is responsible for finding our own meaning to live.*
Bruce Feiler

Thou shalt create complex characters rather than merely complicated story.**
Robert McKee

In breaking down his reflection on the work of
Viktor Frankl –
How we do not ask Life what its meaning is,
But Life asks us –
Bruce Feiler offers an
ABC
for shaping meaning:
A is for Agency,
B is for Belonging,
C is for Cause.

The most meaningful stories contain all of these,
Though we are likely to prioritise,
And in doing so,
Our story deepens:

When you commit you deepen presence. Though your choice narrows the range of possibility now open to you, it increases the intensity of chosen possibility.^

I am reminded of the 3 Cs:
Confession is for expressing the deepest and best truths about ourselves –
And will be marked by growing humility, gratitude and faithfulness;
Communion is for relating to others, our world and our god –
And will be marked by growing integrity, wholeness and perseverance;
Commission is for serving a purpose greater than ourselves –
And will be marked by growing courage, generosity and wisdom.

My growing understanding is that our lives
are trying to call us towards the kind of complexity
Robert McKee suggests we need,
So that if we were able to step outside all
the noise and the rush,
Even for a short while,
We might begin to hear the whisperings of our lives
and begin
or continue
to create our
meaningful stories:

The ancient myths were designed to harmonise the mind and body. The mind can ramble off in strange ways and want things that the body does not want.^^

*Bruce Feiler’s Life Is In the Transitions;
**Robert McKee‘s newsletter: The Beauty of Character Dilemma;
^John O’Donohue’s Eternal Echoes;
^^Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers’ The Power of Myth.
.

But to be what I am, to live what I was meant to live, to want to sound like no one else, to yield the blossoms dictated by my heart: this is what I want and surely this cannot be arrogance.*
Rainer Maria Rilke

In a truly open-world problem devoid of rigid rules and reams of perfect historical data, AI has been disastrous.**
David Epstein

We need to watch over one another’s
creativities;
We do not know what problem they may one day
solve
or what need they may
meet.

There may have been many twists and turns
necessary to finding our peculiar creativities,
But when we look back,
Perhaps look like a singular bow of
elegant solutions.

*Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters On Life;
**David Epstein’s Range.

You enter in one place, go through an elaborate squiggle, then come out in another.*
Lev Sviridov

If you follow your heart’s passion –
AKA
dream
calling
vocation
bliss
purpose
element
path –
Then you will be a
disruptor.

I appreciate that some live disruptive lives in a
harmful way,
But you are going to use your disruption for the good,
The critical,
The life-changing,
And if I can help you find your disruption then
let me know.

*Bruce Feiler’s Life Is In the Transitions.

Nonlinearliity means that the act of playing the game has a way of changing the rules.*
James Gleick

In wicked domains the rules of the game are often unclear or incomplete, there may not be repetitive patterns and they may not be obvious, and feedback is often delayed, inaccurate, or both. In the most devilishly wicked learning environments, experience will reinforce the exact wrong lessons.**
David Epstein

Today, there’ll be many small “happenings” that will change
our day many times over.

Many of these
won’t even be noticed by us:
A message we hadn’t anticipated receiving,
Someone calls by to have a word,
We hear an idea that engages us for
the rest of the day.

We’re so used to them,
But they are what Bruce Feiler labels disruptors.

There are larger ones of course,
Feiler offering five headings:
Love,
Identity,
Belief,
Work,
Body* –
There’s something here for each of us.
We may try to tidy up
the chaotic nature of
existence,
Imposing upon it some way of
understanding and controlling that will
work for a while,
Until it doesn’t –
I know I do –
But the best way forward
Is to engage,
To play the game.

We each have preferred ways for doing this,
Ways we have developed in response
to all the disruptions we have experienced in
your lives:
The talents and abilities that make it possible for us to
play the infinite game.

*Bruce Feiler’s Life Is In the Transitions;
**David Epstein’s Range.

interesting work starts with interesting thinking … and thinking is out reliably spurred by walking*
Oliver Burkeman

Bruce Feiler outlines how life has been seen
differently
through the ages:
The circle of life,
The stages of life,
The linear life.

Life is more dynamic
and more complex
then any of these paradigms allow –
Though I realise,
When it comes to the work that I do,
I take something from each,
Perhaps because they all contain
valuable and, therefore,
Helpful insights.

Put them together,
And more,
And perhaps you have a doodle paradigm,
From dawdling,
A way of walking that is
full of noticing.

What do you think?

*Oliver Burkeman’s Subtle Maneuvers blog: The artist Charles Ray walks to Burger King ever day.

Something’s going on. No one knows how to tell their story anymore. I’ve got to figure out how to help. … Conflict is the one precondition of a story. For there to be a narrative at all, something unforeseen must happen.**
Bruce Feiler

Memorisation is brittle. Metaphor scales. Metaphor helps us create the next thing and find our footing when confronted with the new.^
Seth Godin

Have we forgotten what we want to live our lives for?
It seems ridiculous.
How can we forget our lives?
And yet,
That’s what it can feel like on a daily basis,
When the noise and busyness
encircles and
overwhelms –
And there’s ever more noise and busyness:

life is filled with chaos and complexity, periods of order and disorder, linearity and nonlinearity … loops, spirals, wobbles, fractals, twists, tangles and turnabouts*.

Bruce Feiler is arguing that the linear life is gone
so welcome to the nonlinear –
no more
What is it I’m supposed to do now?
My antidote to forgetfulness
Is to imagine our lives as unfolding stories,
To be visited at the beginning of each day
(wherever possible),
Helping us to remember,
We’re wanting to bring our deepest gladness^
into the gift of a new day.

*A soundtrack for this morning’s post;
**Bruce Feiler’s Life Is In the Transitions;
^Seth Godin’s blog: Circus peanuts don’t contain nuts;
^^Frederick Buechner spoke about finding our purpose where our deep gladness meets the world’s greatest need.

That, I think, is the power of ceremony: it marries the mundane to the sacred. The water turn to wine, the coffee to prayer. … What else can you offer the earth, which has everything? What else can you give ut something of yourself. A homemade ceremony … .*
Robin Wall Kimmerer

Improvement is not just about learning habits, I’d also about fine-tuning them.**
James Clear

It is far too easy
to lose sight of how amazing
is the story we are a part of
for a little while.

We can unfamiliarise it by
slowing
down
and gazing towards an object
close by,
Or opening a moment or two
for writing its description,
Or to draw or doodle it
into its moreness.
I know what you’re thinking:
It must be the same with people –
You’re not wrong,
And what now?

*Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass;
**James Clear’s Atomic Habits.

Success is fleeting, significance is more … significant. … Don’t chase success. Instead chase new and interesting ways of solving other people’s problems.*

*gapingvoid’s blog: Take something ordinary and elevate it.

Leave the door open for the unknown, the door into the dark. That’s where the most important things come from , where you yourself came from, and where you will go.*
Rebecca Solnit

*Rebecca Solnit’s A Field Guide to Getting Lost.

I couldn’t have learned to teach this without my students who helped me to become convinced about the aliveness of images and the aliveness we feel when we experience them. They can raise the dead hours inside of us that nothing else can reach.*
Lynda Barry

*Lynda Barry’s What It Is.