Can you have an experience you don’t experience?*
Oliver Burkeman

Perfect is overrated.
Perfect would have to know everything, and
we don’t;
Perfect would have to contain everything, and
we can’t.
I wonder whether imagining something in a perfect way
is how our brains have developed in order to get us started on stuff.
It’s unlikely we’d do anything if
we imagined something to be rubbish.
But perfect gets the blood pumping,
But then we need to know we can’t actually make that,
And who would want to?
Perfect can’t grow, develop and change into
something better, but
it can help us begin.

*Oliver Burkeman’s Four Thousand Weeks.

To be prepared against surprise is to be trained. To be prepared for surprise is to be educated.*
James Carse

It’s a kind of sacred discontent, a holy dissatisfaction, and the holy desire for more life, love, and generosity.**
Richard Rohr

I sense a call to more from both
within and without, a summons to
surprise and the unfamiliar,
And, at my age,
I am thankful

*James Carse’s Finite and Infinite Games;
**Richard Rohr’s The Divine Dance.

Every single moment contains thousands of possibilities – and I can only choose one of them to actualise it … . Everything I realise through them, or “bring into the world,” as we have said, I save into reality and thus protect from transience.*
Viktor Frankl

By being what only I can be I give humanity what only I can give. It is my uniqueness that allows me to contribute something unique to the universal heritage of humankind.**
Jonathan Sacks

As a blank piece of paper may be filled with
all manner of images, so
a moment
is full of possibilities, and
It is up to you and me to choose what we shall
bring into being, but
procrastination is our nemesis.
The best way you and me can decide upon
what this moment can be, is for you to be
fully you, and me to be
fully me;
As Dolly has wisely said:
Find out who you are and
do it on purpose.^
And, as
Oliver Wendell Holmes laments:
Alas, for those that never sing
But die with all their music in them.^^

*Viktor Frankl’s Yes to Life;
**Krista Tippett’s Becoming Wise;
Austin Kleon’s blog: On solitude and being who you are;
^^Martin Amor and Alex Pellew’s The Idea in You.

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

you might prepare for your central mission in life by doing other things that may seem entirely unrelated, and how necessary this may be**
Rebecca Solnit

At a point in my working life, when my contemporaries
were stepping into yet another role of
great responsibility, or more,
I found myself stepping into a quieter role,
Less public.
I didn’t know it at the time,
But there a different future
would begin to emerge.

‘Homo non proprie humanus sedsuperhumanus est’ –
which means that to be properly human,
you must go beyond the merely human.^

*Seth Godin’s blog: Actual shortcuts often appear to be detours;
**Rebecca Solnit’s Orwell’s Roses;
^Eugene Peterson’s Run With the Horses.

Man and society are resurrected every moment in the act of hope and of 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

[W]e are a limited amount of time. That’s how completely our limited time defines us.**
Oliver Burkeman

We may think that the time has passed,
But whilst we are here there are
hope and faith,
That is,
if we want to be creators of these,
As Eve Ensler offers:
We find our fulfilment
where we choose to find our fulfilment.^
We do not have to wait for our godot, but will
find with ourselves our world of possibility:
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.^^
There is only one proviso:
If we are to find ourselves, then
We must find each other:
Whether met or read,
People have changed me,
As Xavier Le Pichon has expressed so well:
My heart cannot be educated by myself.
It can only come out of a
relationship with others.^
In opening to the other we
open to ourselves.

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

Shift your mindset from hearing to listening, seeing passively to seeing intentionally, practise sharpening your five senses, and you will begin to feel a sense of fulfilment from contemplating things that may appear to be boring.*
Ryunosuke Koike

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

Boredom is the enemy,
or so we think.
So we distract ourselves with our devices, and miss
the gift –
How boredom is an invitation to adventure,
To living fully in our senses and paying attention,
Noticing what we have missed,
The result of which is
endless exploration and connection.

*Ryunosuke Koike’s The Practice of Not Thinking;
**Ian Bogost’s Play With Anything.

Love is perhaps the most difficult task given us, the most extreme, the final proof and text, for which all other work is only preparation.*
Rainer Maria Rilke

John Lewis asked a “what if” question as a tool for social alchemy: what if the beloved community were already a reality, the true reality, and he simply had to embody it until everyone could see it.*
Krista Tippett

Love has everything to do with it.
Theory U envisages a journey from
I-in-me,
The self existing in the cocoon
in a small defensive world, to
I-in-it, in which we become open to new information, then
I-in-us, and we learn about each other, to
I-in-now, when we open to what is wanting to emerge,
The better society we know is wanting to exist:
The revolutionary force in this century
is the awakening of a deep generative human capacity –
the I-in-now.**
Karen Armstrong writes about how, millennia ago,
Humans began creating better stories:
The first great flowering of mythology…
came into being at a time when homo sapiens became home mecans,
“man the killer,”
and found it very difficult to accept
the conditions of his existence in a violent world.^
We speak of tolerance and respect, but
perhaps what we need a better story of love,
The most difficult task of all.

*Krista Tippett’s Becoming Wise;
**Otto Scharmer’s Theory U;
^Karen Armstrong’s A Short History of Myth.

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

Problems don’t really care whether we acknowledge them or not. They still exist. What matters is how we choose to direct our energy, because our tomorrow is the direct result of the way we spend our resources today.**
Seth Godin

… but this one is;
We have to make sure we focus our energies
on the problem we are here to
make a difference
with:
Where our deepest joy meets
the world’s greatest need.^

*Hugh Macleod’s Evil Plans;
**Seth Godin’s blog: Choosing your problems;
^Acts of community service notwithstanding.