When we shift our mindset and open ourselves to the awe of daily life, we may find that opportunities to be wowed are all around us.*
Jonah Paquette

Awe is the feeling we have when we encounter the monumental or immeasurable. We experience a sudden shrinking of the self, yet a rapid expansion of the soul.**
Nick Cave

We can find ourselves
in awe
of the things people do in the
ordinariness of life.
I think Nick Cave is right,
If we can get past the fact that we can’t do what this person can,
And we’re okay about feeling small in that moment,
We can also feel an important part of us growing;
Rather than resentment, we feel awe, and
our soul grows.
This was my experience just yesterday
as I listened to someone share the different things that
energised them but I couldn’t do.
I realised that I wasn’t hard staring at their lives,
With all of it accompanying judgement,
I was soft gazing with openness;
I was then able to help them and
they were able to help me.

*The Wise Brain Bulletin: Mind Bending Awe;
**The Red Hand Files: #157.

Clichés grow in the barren mind of the lazy writer. … Create a story that only you could write.**
Robert McKee

This isn’t
hyper-individuality;
it’s about every one of us needing to know that
we are capable of exploring a different life through
humility and
generosity and
faithfulness –
Your unique beauty.

*Soundtrack for today from Tina Turner;
**Robert McKee‘s newsletter: Why Story Needs Your Unique Vision.

Because it’s not for you. It’s for them. Generosity unlocks doors inside of us.*
Seth Godin

In reality, the secret is simple. When the heart is aligned with its eternal image, abundance cascades forth from that place of origin, infinitely more powerful than the scarcity and constriction of the world.**
Cynthia Borgeault

Do you find your way to your place of abundance at the
beginning of the day –
Whether for a free moments or longer?
I go to the words of others:
My “blog tribe” folder of posts –
Containing almost 400 blogs,
Freely given by a host of people I mostly do not know;
I’m waiting for a number of books to arrive,
Second-hand and costing a £few
but rich with ideas that are new to me;
And ancient scriptures, familiar and
always unfamiliar.
Your abundance may be quite different:
A reflective walk,
Holding a generous thought,
Being still with a beautiful piece of music …
The generosity of others provides us with an abundance
out of which we shape a generous day.

*Seth Godin’s post The lifeguard hack;
**Cynthia Bourgeault’s The Meaning of Mary Magdalene.

Enjoy your obscurity while it lasts.*
Austin Kleon

It’s a strange thing,
When our existence is one of obscurity we want to be
noticed,
But when we are noticed to the extent that
our day is dictated to us by others and their
machine then
we desire obscurity:

There’s no pressure when you’re unknown. You can do what you want. Experiment. Do things just for the fun of it. When you’re unknown, there’s nothing to distract you from getting better. No public image to manage. No huge paycheque on the line. No stockholders. No e-mails from your agent. No hangers-on.*

These words from Austin Kleon translate into
an everyday
for all of us.
And once we’re known in our workplace or field
it’s difficult to find our creative spaces,
Though, thankfully, not impossible to
introduce things that are fun to us,
To “waste time” experimenting and exploring,
Creating our own development plan,
Playing within it every day.
A good place to begin writing down the things that get your
blood pumping:

I’ve come to believe in the power of writing down your vision. I don’t believe writing down a vision for your life creates any sort of magic in the universe, but I do believe it sets a general compass for your subconscious.**

Rainer Maria Rilke writes about creating our own obscurity:

What is needed is only this: solitude, great inner solitude.  Going within and meeting no one else for hours – that is what one must learn to attain.^

As my friend Sam Radford points out,
When we waste hours like this
we avoid wasting years:

We waste years because we don’t have the opportunity to waste hours.^^

*Austin Kleon’s blog: A message for graduates;
**Donald Miller’s Hero On a Mission;
^Maria Popova’s The Marginalian: Rilke On the Relationship Between Solitude, Love, Sex, and Creativity;
^^Sam Radford’s blog: Wasting years by not wasting hours.

All work and life exist within an imperfect space. … Imperfect spaces are your friend. … Imperfect is a superpower if you know how to use it.*
David Wolstencroft

We don’t have to wait for perfect –
context, timing, me and you;
There’s a lot that can begin without perfect –
Indeed,
Perfect often gets in the way of the
good
and, then, the
very good.

*gapingvoid’s blog: Imperfect is a superpower.

To listen to the voice of the world, the self must be silenced.  And the flâneur is the incarnation of this ideal: dazzled by beauty, he decides to relinquish the self in order to consecrate his life to contemplation.*
Federico Castigliano

*Federico Castigliano’s Flâneur; also,, the female flâneuse.

Freedom should be recommended only to someone who knows what boundless responsibility is. *
Rainer Maria Rilke

*Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters on Life.

We can’t prove Must.  We can’t point to it, or define where it stops and starts, because it’s not a thing that we can see.  But we know that it exists because when it’s near, we feel it in our gut, it begs for a second glance, pulls us into another dimension, a space out of time where a day can pass in a moment.*
Elle Luna

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

The final movement of a ballet, the coda of a symphony, the couplet of a sonnet, the last act and its story climax – these culminating moments must be the most gratifying, meaningful experiences of all.*
Robert McKee

I am sixty-one, and I am also four, and twelve, and fifteen, and twenty-three, and thirty-one, ad forty-five, and … and … and … If we lose any part of ourselves, we are thereby diminished. If I cannot be thirteen and sixty-one simultaneously, part of me has been taken away.**
Madeleine L’Engle

Are we there yet?
Hopefully not,
For as long as we are travelling we can be
curious,
And as long as we are curious we create
tension,
And tension open up a place within
for something to happen,
The possibility of growth,
The possibility of creativity.
Wisdom is not what we know,
Though we can never know too much;
Wisdom is a beautiful expression of all that we are and
all that we know,
And awaiting lies another
intensity.

Old men should be explorers
Here and there does not matter
We must be still and still moving
Into another intensity.^

*Robert McKee‘s newsletter: Why You Must Save the Best For Last;
**Madeleine L’Engle’s Walking on Water;
^T. S. Eliot, quoted in Peter Turchi’s A Muse and a Maze.

I am learning to see.  I don’t know why it is, but everything penetrates more deeply into me and does not stop at the place where until now it always used to finish.  I have an inner self of which I was ignorant.  Everything goes thither now.  What happens there I do not know.*
Rainer Maria Rilke

in indigenous ways of knowing, we understand a thing only when we understand it with four aspects of our being: mind, body, emotion, and spirit**
Robin Wall Kimerer

I am happy to get out of the way;
To be unnoticed but noticing,
Unobserved but observing,
Is to be free,
Is to be open to awe –
Found in others
and all of the world:

This sort of mind-bending awe … requires us to open up to the wonders of the world in a different way, and to harness the power of our imaginations to evoke moments of awe within us.^

And then,
If I may,
I will bring to you what I find.

*David Brooks’ The Second Mountain;
**Robin Wall Kimerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass;
^Jonah Paquette’s The Muse Brain Bulletin: Mind Bending Awe.