Remembering my mortality gives me the needed motivation to make change, hold everything more lightly, and have compassion for my self and other people.*
(Beth Pickens)

Nietzsche said that a man’s worth was determined by how much truth he could tolerate. You are by no means only what you already now. You are also all that which you could know, if only you would. This you should never sacrifice what you could be for what you are.**
(Jordan Peterson)

Here is meaning.

What we know becomes who we are and what we can do.

A life time doesn’t seem enough but it’s all we have:

Our life times are specks in the universe, but they are the longest and only spans of time we will ever now.*

This is a mighty advantage, as Rainer Maria Rilke contemplates:

Hier zu sein is so vies – to be here is immense.^

As specks in the universe, we will never know everything. Neither is there a list of what we must now in order to live meaningfully.

The aim to know more is what matters most of all, by which we each make a path into knowing that will unfold before us.

Perhaps
The truth depends on a walk around the lake.^^

*From Beth Pickens’ Make Your Art No Matter What;
**From Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules For Life;
^Rainer Maria Rilke, quoted in John O’Donohue’s To Bless the Space Between Us;
^^Wallace Stevens, quoted in Robert Macfarlane’s The Old Ways.

If you’re blessed with imagination, it’s part of your job to bring better images to the world.*
(Austin Kleon)

Art isn’t only a painting. Art is anything that’s creative, passionate and personal. An artist is someone that uses bravery, insight, creativity and boldness to challenge the status quo. Art is a personal gift that changes the recipient. The medium doesn’t matter. The intent does. Art is a personal act of courage, something that one human does that creates change in another.**
(Seth Godin)

We all have imagination.

We just forget that it needs tending: select, arrange, enhance

When we remember, it can be recovered and expanded.

If we pursue this with purpose, we become artists.

Artists who know what they bring is necessary to prevent each other becoming stuck.

The status quo isn’t how things really are: it’s just what happens without imagination.

*From Austin Kleon’s How to talk to someone with a missing imagination;
**Seth Godin, quoted in Ben Hardy’s article These 20 Pictures Will Teach You More Than Reading 100 Books.

When you start working everybody is in your studio – the past, your friends, enemies, the art world, and above all, your own ideas – all are there. But as you continue painting, they start leaving, one by one, and you are left completely alone. Then, if you’re lucky, even you leave.*
(John Cage)

Attention is like energy in that without it no work can be done and in doing work it is dissipated. We create ourselves by how we invest this energy.**
(Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi)

A lot of people, ideas and failures have brought us to this place, and now that we’re here, we need to know that we are enough, that we can do this.

And if things go wrong, these can be some of greatest opportunities:

A “flamboyant” worker, exuberant and excited, is willing to risk control over his or her work: machines break down when they lose control, whereas people make discoveries, stumble on happy accidents.^

Our unique alacrity is attention that don’t necessarily know what it will discover.

You can trust you.

*John Cage, quoted in Lewis Hyde’s A Primer for Forgetting;
**From Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow;
^From Richard Sennett’s The Craftsman.

It’s time to let go. It might be time to sacrifice what you love best, so that you might become who you might become, instead of staying who you are.*
(Jordan Peterson)

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them? Yet you have made them a little lower than God, and crowned them with glory and honour.**

Oaths, peace and reconciliation, acts of oblivion: Lewis Hyde lists how humans have acted through history in order to forget the things that would otherwise torment them.

We don’t have to be religious to appreciate what the psalmist is grappling with. More than ever, we know both our smallness in the vastness of space and the potential uniqueness of our consciousness.

Together, these make us creatures of wonder rather than celebrities.

We can be terrible rememberers, though, living half-lives both for ourselves and for the good of others, and yet we live in a universe that allows us each day to forget what has been and to explore through remembering what we can be.

We do not wander into this kind of forgetfulness, the existence of oaths, peace and reconciliation and acts of oblivion make it clear how difficult it can be to forget – something we may have to choose each day – but it is not impossible, and a world of remembering waits to open before us.

*From Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life;
**Psalm 8:3-5.

The point of curating trends is to see what others don’t and to predict a future that can inspire new thinking.*
(Rohit Bhargava)

Instead of simply clearing the incoming and reacting to what’s knocking on your door, you can invest the time to learn and the effort to practice.**
(Seth Godin)

what I see I can use
what I do not see I cannot

gratitude opens my eyes

*From Rohit Bhargava’s Non Obvious 2019;
**From Seth Godin’s blog: Levelling up isn’t easy.

I am fearfully and wonderfully made. … In your book were written all the days that were formed for me, when none of them as yet existed.*

fewer days now
but enough
hopefully
to imagine
to play
to make

destiny schmestiny
keep changing
growing
developing

*Psalm 139: 14, 16.

generosity
bravery
insight

these need
not cost a
penny

But then, when you start drawing you can never be quite sure what is going to happen next, can you?*
(Quentin Blake)

Paradoxically, a self-centred self cannot become more complex, because all the psychic energy at its disposal is invested in fulfilling its current goals.**

I thought it possible
to get
there from
here but could not
and cannot only
move directly
or outwardly

indirectly and
inwardly
are my lessons
learned
am
learning

to there
replaced

keep exploring
old man
make maps
fill the blank
spaces

there are no
monsters
only wonders to
fall into

hope myself from
here
courage myself to
there
seek seek
seek
forward

keep exploring
old man
make maps
fill the blank
spaces

falling
failing
confess
begin again

through the wild
wrangling
wrestling
wrenching

keep exploring
old man
make maps
fill the blank
spaces

to there
replaced

*From Quentin Blake’s Angel Pavement:
**From Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow;

But then, when you start drawing you can never be quite sure what is going to happen next, can you?*
(Quentin Blake)

Paradoxically, a self-centred self cannot become more complex, because all the psychic energy at its disposal is invested in fulfilling its current goals.**

I’ve been playing with a single blog that has altered a little each day.

I’ve included the quote that caught my eye and set up the doodle I’ll be working on through the week.

If you’ve tried doodling through the week, how’s yours been working out?

One of the things I’ve been learning is that what I want^ isn’t where I thought it would be, I had to move to somewhere different if I was to get there: physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually – something that I had to learn along the way.

Of course, the place I wanted to go to changed as well.

Who knew what I wanted wasn’t what I wanted?

I’m still learning and moving, with lots of course corrections.

That’s okay, though. T. S. Eliot declared that old men should be explorers. (Women too, please.)

In mapmaking, there was a time when cartographers would fill spaces they didn’t know anything about with sea-monsters.

Then things changed. 

A group of map-makers came along who said “we’re just going to leave areas blank that we don’t know anything about and we’ll fill them in as they’re explored and we know what’s there.”

There are three things I realise I need more of, though, if I am to be an explorer. 

Hope: to move me from here to somewhere out there.

Courage: to move from the familiar to the unfamiliar.

Seeking: to fall into the exploring life and never stop falling.

Here are three more words I need when things go wrong:

Failing: because I do, time and time again.

Starting over: there’s always the possibility of a new beginning.

Confession: a word to insert between failing and starting over because ‘fessing up not only makes a new beginning possible, but is likely to place us on a mightier way.

*From Quentin Blake’s Angel Pavement:
**From Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow;
^I have just been reminded that want can also mean lack.

But then, when you start drawing you can never be quite sure what is going to happen next, can you?*
(Quentin Blake)

I’ve been playing with a single blog that has altered a little each day.

I’ve included the quote that caught my eye and set up the doodle I’ll be working on through the week.

If you’ve tried doodling through the week, how’s yours been working out?

One of the things I’ve been learning is that what I want** isn’t where I thought it would be, I had to move to somewhere different if I was to get there: physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually – something that I had to learn along the way.

Of course, the place I wanted to go to changed as well.

Who knew what I wanted wasn’t what I wanted?

I’m still learning and moving, with lots of course corrections.

That’s okay, though. T. S. Eliot declared that old men should be explorers. (Women too, please.)

In mapmaking, there was a time when cartographers would fill spaces they didn’t know anything about with sea-monsters.

Then things changed. 

A group of map-makers came along who said “we’re just going to leave areas blank that we don’t know anything about and we’ll fill them in as they’re explored and we know what’s there.”

There are three things I realise I need more of, though, if I am to be an explorer.

Hope: to move me from here to somewhere out there.

Courage: to move from the familiar to the unfamiliar.

Seeking: to fall into the exploring life and never stop falling:

Paradoxically, a self-centred self cannot become more complex, because all the psychic energy at its disposal is invested in fulfilling its current goals.^

*From Quentin Blake’s Angel Pavement:
**I have just been reminded that want can also mean lack;
^From Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow.