People of faith and hope are often unrealistic, and the realists have little faith or hope. We shall find a way out of the present situation only if realism and faith become blended again as they were in some of the great teachers of mankind.*
(Erich Fromm)

If we could but find a rhythm of being which could balance a contemplative silence, a poetry of motion and an accompanying stillness and silence, our pilgrimage through this world would flow in beauty through the most ragged and forsaken heartlands of confusion and dishevelment.**
(John O’Donohue)

The place we seek is likely to be where reality and imagination, stillness and movement meet.

Let us not cease from our explorations.

*From Erich Fromm’s The Revolution of Hope;
**From John O’Donohue’s Divine Beauty.

When passion of feeling and technical brilliance come together, the beauty can be devastating and transfiguring.*
(John O’Donohue)

What brings out the best in you? What brings out the worst? […] Can you change your posture so that situations you’re in bring out the best instead of the worst? Ideal situations are often rare – now more so than ever. But we can define “ideal situation” if we wish.**
(Seth Godin)

In her compendium of untranslatable words from around the world Ella Frances Sanders includes tsundoku, a Japanese word for:

Leaving a book unread after buying it, typically piled up together with other unread books.^

I found myself reading and reflecting this morning on themes of flourishing through talents and environments.

With Spring breaking out all around, Sanders’ compendium caused me to wonder what the word might be for personal verdancy, when beauty breaks through the hard shell of our personal protection or the harsh demands from the other.

How about chlorostelńo: the ability to send forth or live our inner greenness into the most exposed and challenging parts of our lives?I’d love to hear your possibilities.

In writing about the colour of beauty, John O’Donohue proffers:

Green is the colour of growth, the colour of hope.*

It may only be a green shoot of life breaking through tarmac or concrete, but this speaks to us of what can be. If we are able to notice, this determined greenness is all around us.

In his delightful book about the hidden life of trees, Peter Wohlleben reveals how the Autumn turning of leaves to red, gold and brown is the result of the tree withdrawing and storing its chlorophyll in its constituent parts, ready for Spring’s new growth.

This got me thinking about how we can be tempted, or sometimes forced, to hide away within ourselves the beauty of our particular greenness.

Rather than growth and hope, it turns into that horrible word potential.

Or worse, it is pushed down beneath the pressure of develop generally and fitting in:

We don’t spend a lot of time reflecting on our skills and talents, because we’ve been conditioned to be humble. We largely focus on our “areas for improvement” – the things we lack confidence and competency in, to the detriment of our gifts and our genius.^^

Humble is an interesting word.

In the way Bernadette Jiwa uses it here, it means having to be dishonest about ourselves.

It should really be about being accurate about who we are and what we can do, because when we are accurate and true then we know where and how we can grow.

It can also be related to the ego or False Self, or to the eco or True Self.

The ego is likely to tell us that we aren’t doing well enough, that we have to do better if we want to count, to be noticed.

The ego can be a tyrant, especially for those who had been told how clever and amazing they were in their earlier years.

The eco, though, is likely to draw us to what we are doing well, encouraging further development, showing how we have worked hard to improve and that further work will see even more growth.

Towards the kind of growth Jiwa imagines, it’s important to identify some steps; here are some that occurred to me this morning:

We need to notice the truth about ourselves in relation to our talents, values, energies – journaling out illustrations for these so you are engaging with details rather than generalities;

We need to spend time imagining how these may be re-expressed in the future: how, where, with whom;

We need to be ready to begin straight away: we don’t need anyone’s permission save our own: the right time is always now;

And we need to reflect: noticing how our talents, values and energies grow over time and just how we are changing as a result.

May the greenness of your beauty break through.

*From John O’Donohue’s Divine Beauty;
**From Seth Godin’s blog: What bring out the best in you?;
^From Ella Frances Sander’s Lost in Translation;
^^From Bernadette Jiwa’s The Story of Telling blog: On Strengths.

The thing you do not have to say make you rich.
Saying things you do not have to say weakens your talk.
Hearing things you do not need to hear dulls your hearing.
And things you know before you hear them – those are you,
Those are why you are in the world.*
(William Stafford)

Audiences and readers do not go to the storyteller to learn yet again what they already know. They go in hope of discovering a world they have never seen before.**
(Robert McKee)

We are a journeying species:

emergent beings, in the flow of life, part of evolution^.

Part of life’s evolutionary flux, the changes taking place through the human generations are too small for us to perceive.

And yet, you and I can instigate such innovations within our lives that we can feel ourselves to be completely differently people from one end of our lives to the other.

Or less, even: say five, ten, fifteen years, depending on the journey we set out on.

Try it for yourself: I recommend identifying talents, values and energies.

*William Stafford, quoted in John O’Donohue’s Divine Beauty;
**From Robert McKee‘s newsletter: Parasite;
^From Paul Gilbert’s The Compassionate Mind.

I always admire people who marvel at things that anyone could have noticed but didn’t.*
(Brian Eno)

If we were to describe our lives simply in terms of its factual truth, most of its interesting, complex and surprising dimensions would be left out.**
(John O’Donohue)

Life invites us to pierce the finite and look upon the infinite.

In his book on compassion Paul Gilbert lists all the things we didn’t get to choose, from being born, through where and when, to the social groups we find ourselves in with the educational possibilities that come with these:

We just find ourselves here trying to make sense of it the best that we can.^

We can stop short and only focus on these things or we can look through them to see what lies beyond, a beginning rather than a destination:

Most people don’t look …
The gaze that pierces – few have it –
What does the gaze pierce?
The question mark.^^

I love these words from Hedda Sterne, piercing the finite, the ego:

I see myself as a well-working lens, a perceiver of something that exists independently of me: don’t look at me, look at what I’ve found.*^

Her gaze isn’t interrupted by needing to see herself, or for others to see her, in a particular way:

Unless you can forget yourself when you look, there isn’t a true relationship happening between the work of art and the viewer. The same thing goes for work. The more anonymous you are and the more you lose yourself, the more you add to yourself. It sounds absurd, but that’s the way it really is.*^

She may be speaking out of her art, but her words resonate with all of us exploring our worlds.

The absurdness we come upon is exactly how the marvellous life works.

We can all learn to marvel.

And we don’t have to go far to find the marvellous. It’s within us, within others, within all that is around us:

My idea being that for the sublime and the beautiful and the interesting, you don’t have to look far away. You have to know how to see.*^

*From Brian Eno’s A Year With Swollen Appendices;
**From John O’Donohue’s Divine Beauty;
^From Paul Gilbert’s The Compassionate Mind;
^^Henri Cartier-Bresson, quoted in John O’Donohue’s Divine Beauty;
*^Hedda Sterne quoted in Austin Kleon’s blog: The work and wisdom of Hedda Sterne.

A gracious mind has compassion and sensitive understanding. It is without greed; rather than concentrating on what is absent or missing, it is able to celebrate and give thanks for what is present.*
(John O’Donohue)

To find the truth get your own heart to pound while you write.**
(Robert McKee)

Where our deepest gladness meets the world’s greatest need is a place of beauty and grace.

Whatever we do where our talents, passions and energies meet, may it set our heart pounding.

There is then a reason we notice the needs we do.

*From John O’Donohue’s Divine Beauty;
**From Robert McKee’s newsletter: Why You Must Believe Your Story.

It’s your responsibility to set your future self up for as much opportunity, success, and joy as possible. This is how you become the person and create the life you want, rather than becoming someone with regret. Describe your future self.*
(Ben Hardy)

The soul is never at home in the social world that we inhabit. It is too large for our contained, managed lives.**
(John O’Donohue)

Seeing is everything.

When we sow gladness and gratitude we produce generosity for others to harvest.

To see our lives for what they are and to grow them as large as we can is about sowing.

That we end up with more than we need is for others.

Life is not linear. When you follow your own true north you create new opportunities, meet different people, have different experiences and create a different life.^

*From Benjamin Hardy’s Personality Isn’t Permanent;
**From John O’Donohue’s Divine Beauty;
^From Ken Robinson’s Out of Our Minds.

Beauty calls us beyond ourselves and it encourages us to engage the dream that dwells in the soul.*
(John O’Donohue)

I, wherever I turned, felt the enchantment: to the window for the sweetness of the air; to the door for the passing figures; to the teapot, the typewriter, the knitting needles, the pets, the pottery, the newspapers, the telephone. Wherever I looked I could have lived.**
(M. C. Richards)

My work, as I see and understand it, is to help people uncover the dream that dwells in their soul. The dream, if given expression, means they will be at home wherever they find themselves.

More than ever, we need to uncover our dreams, but there are obstacles.

Writing over fifty years ago, Erich Fromm observed our dilemma and peril:

A spectre is stalking in our midst whom only a few see with clarity.^

Writing not long after the McCarthy witch-hunt and in the middle of a war in Vietnam, he continues:

It is a new spectre: a completely mechanised society, devoted to maximal materials output and consumption, directed by computers; and in this social process, man himself is being transformed into a part of the total machine, well fed and entertained, yet passive, unlike, and with little feeling.^

More than ever, this is where many find themselves.

Fromm delivers three necessary changes:

We must overcome the industrial plague of over-production and over-consumption towards levels that support our unfolding and growth (and the good of the planet).

We must replace systems that encourage passiveness with those encouraging activeness.

We will need to pursue being rather than having and using ‘in a new synthesis in which compassion and justice, freedom and structure, intellect and affect are blended’.^

Those who uncover their dreams know there is much to do; their dreams may well be the means.

*From John O’Donohue’s Divine Beauty;
**From M. C. Richards’ Centering;
^From Erich Fromm’s The Revolution of Hope.

Why is it no other species but man gets bored? Under the circumstances in which a man gets bored, a dog goes to sleep.*
(Walker Percy)

When you grow up
and have children of your own
do please remember
something important
a stodgy parent is no fun at all.
What a child wants
and deserves
is a parent who is
SPARKY**
(Roald Dahl)

If we want to be people of light rather than people of dark, it occurs to me that the best place to begin is to find our Must, the thing we must do before we pop our clogs, that not only excites us but make a difference in the lives of others.

Boredom is often our call to make something happen.

An there are as many different lights to be shed as there are people.

*From Walker Percy’s Lost in the Cosmos;
**From Roald Dahl’s Danny the Champion of the World.

I am a question-asker and a truth-seeker. I do not have much in the way of status in my life, nor security. I have been on a quest, as it were, from the beginning.*
(M. C. Richards)

[O]ur limitation as ephemeral creatures fuels our passion for finding the eternal truths of nature so that we may feel more at home in the universe and in ourselves.**
(Maria Popova)

If it’s possible for businesses to find themselves in a race to the bottom selling more cheaply to undercut the competition, it’s likely there’s a personal equivalent to this.

But whatever we do in life, it’s likely there’s a question we can find that can help us raise our game.

And then there’ll be another one.

We’re on an amazing journey in spaceship-universe.

*From M. C. Richards’ Centering;
**From Maria Popova’s Brain Pickings: How to Live With Our Human Limitations, echoing Brian Greene.

The experience of ego-identity is based on the concept of having. I have “me” as I have all other things which this “me” owns. Identity of “I” or self refers to the category of being and not of having. I am “I” only to the extent to which I am alive, interested, related active, and which I have achieved an integration between my appearance – to others and/or to myself – and the core of my personality.*
(Erich Fromm)

Our knowledge, if we allow it to be transformed within us, turns into capacity for life-serving human deeds.**
(M. C. Richards)

Perhaps the difference a human having and a human being is that one seeks to own and the other to make space within for the other – be it person or object.

If I have I will not be changed.

Not so if I make space for the other within.

Who am I in relation to this person, this book, this idea, this tool, this tree, this river … :

To read is to expose a vulnerability, for at least a brief moment, to surrender to another perspective, to bring it inside yourself and try it on.^

Such a human being opens to immense creativity, having respect for the other person, the world, their god, themselves, objects and artefacts, thoughts and ideas:

It’s all about what you ingest throughout your lifetime that creates what your eye is.^^

*From Erich Fromm’s The Revolution of Hope;
**From M. C. Richards’ Centering;
^Aaron Koblin in Maria Popova and Claudia Bedrick’s A Velocity of Being;
^^Bill Ross, quoted in Austin Kleon’s blog: A gumbo in your head.