People overvalue their knowledge and underestimate the probability of their being wrong.*
(Nassim Taleb)

Take me down to the spring of my life, and tell me my nature and my name.**
(George Appleton)

Better to ask a question than give an answer or advice:

‘the unquestioned confines us to smaller and smaller compartments of ourselves’.^

It’s not that we’ll ever run out of wondering, whether about things “out there” or “in here”:

“One of the reasons that we wonder is because we are limited, and that limitation is one of the greatest gateways to wonder.”^^

May we awake each new day wondering.

(*From Nassim Taleb’s Fooled by Randomness.)
(**George Appleton, quoted in the Northumbria Community‘s Morning Prayer.)
(^From Maria Popova’s Brain Pickings: A Gentle Corrective for the Epidemic of Identity Politics … .)
(^^John O’Donohue, quoted in Maria Popova’s Brain Pickings: A Gentle Corrective for the Epidemic of Identity Politics … .)

Traveller, there is no path, the path must be forged as you walk.*
(Antonio Machado)

the process of living itself, if you please, is a work of art, as a masterpiece of anybody’s life holds the optimal strength and growth, and which in his life is the most important thing**
(Erich Fromm)

Your life is powerful.

Listen to what it is saying.

There is no path waiting for you.

Only the path you will make.

(*Antonio Machado, quoted in Brené Brown’s Daring Greatly.)
(**From Erich Fromm’s The Art of Listening.)

Think small and act small and we will get bigger, think big and act big and we’ll get smaller.*
(Herb Kelleher)

true belonging only happens when we present our authentic, imperfect selves too the world, our sense of belonging can never be greater than our level of self-acceptance**
(Brené Brown)

Seth Godin asks the question, ‘Does an orchestra need an oboe?’^

Which instrument wouldn’t be missed next?

‘The little fillips, the extraneous extras, the indispensable nice bits – they count for more than we know.’^

Herb Kelleher built an airline on looking after its employees, telling them they mattered.  He, and those around him, knew that if you look after your employees then you could trust them to look after the customers.  And that’s what happened, year after year after year, until SouthWest Airlines were transporting more passengers than any other airline.

Each of us matters.  The things we’re curious about and get interested in, they things we pursue with a passion and get to making, they all matter.

True competition is found in complementariness.

Think small and act small and the world gets bigger.

(*Herb Kelleher, quoted in gapingvoid’s blog: The way we fly – a tribute to Kelleher, co-founder of SouthWest Airlines.)
(**From Brené Brown’s Braving the Wilderness.)
(^From Seth Godin’s blog: Does an orchestra need an oboe?)

I am a work in progress.*
(Anthony Weeks)

Real mathematicians understand completeness, real philosophers understand incompleteness, the rest don’t formally understand anything.**
(Nassim Taleb)

We play be use it’s more than a game.  Johan Huizinga notes how play is not only something our species engages in:

‘all the basic factors of play, both individual and communal, are already present in animal life – to wit, contests, performances, exhibitions. challenges, preening, strutting, and hosings-off, pretences and binding rules. […] Woodcocks perform dances, crows hold flying-matches, bower-birds and others decorate their nests, song-birds chant their melodies’.^

He connects this with the expression life is:

‘Thus competitions  and exhibitions as amusements do not proceed from culture, they rather precede it.’^

Watch any sport or game and there’s a way of describing it as “just this” or “just that.”  On the surface, these are empty and somewhat meaningless things.  But we know there’s more to a game, the way it can engage, challenge, bring out life performance, clarify goals in life, point us towards meaning and purpose.

We are the species that has taken game-playing to new levels, many games have become life for people.  Seeing it the other way around, though, that games help us to explore what life can be, allow us to face the incomplete, the tensions, the difficulties and find a more vibrant life:

‘When we are talking about emergence, disruptions, discontinuous storylines, and points of divergence and convergence, I light up.’*

(*Anthony Weeks, from Drawn Together Through Visual Practice.)
(**From Nassim Taleb’s The Bed of Procrustes.)
(^From Johan Huizinga’s Homo Ludens.)

when we contemplate the whole globe as one great dewdrop, striped and dotted with continents and islands, flying through space with other stars all singing and shining together as one, the whole universe appears as an infinite storm of beauty*
(John Muir)

(We recall Plato’s conjecture that the origins of play lies in the need of all young creatures, animal and human, to leap.**
(Johan Huizinga)

There is something more primal and truthful in play than in the earnest stories we have come to tell ourselves.  Play connects us with the universe of which we are made, Martin Buber claiming:

‘The You knows no system of coordinates.’^

I read “coordinates” to be the stories we tell ourselves and live within as cultures and societies.  Johan Huizinga holds that these stories have arisen from play but then have lost their playfulness.

Without playfulness, they become our prisons, at worst dictating our places and functions, at best, limiting these.

But the universe has given you the capacity to leap and you must leap – each of us in our different way.

Don’t wait to be picked.  Pick yourself.

(*John Muir, quoted in Maria Popova’s Brain Pickings: The Universe as an Infinite Storm of Beauty.)
(**From Johan Huizinga’s Homo Ludens.)
(^From Martin Buber’s I and Thou.)

Silence will speak more to you in a day than the world of voices can teach you in a lifetime.
Find silence.  Find solitude – and having discovered her riches, bind her to your heart.*
(Frances Roberts)

Most of us then default to one of a handful of templates and filters for all their experiences; everything gets pulled inside of what my little mind already agrees with.**
(Richard Rohr)

It’s not just that we live in an amazing world, making each and every one of us rich.

It’s not only that humility and gratitude and faithfulness open these riches to us.

It’s that our ability and willingness to play make these things available to us more quickly and permanently:

“Scientists have recently determined that it takes approximately 400 repetitions to create a new synapse in the brain – unless it is done with play, in which case, it takes between 10-20 repetitions.”^

Then this new year begins to look different, what it might also be, not only what it already is.

(*Frances Roberts, quoted in the Northumbria Community‘s Morning Prayer.)
(**From Richard Rohr’s The Divine Dance.)
(^Karyn Purvis, quoted on Speech and Language Therapy Lanarkshire‘s Facebook page.)

Most important is the [Chinese] word wan, in which ideas of children’s games predominate, but extending its semantic range to the following special meanings: to be busy, to enjoy something, to trifle, to romp, to jest, to crack jokes, to make mock of […] the semantic starting point would seem to be “handling something with playful attention”, or to be “lightly engrossed”.*
(Johan Huizinga)

Live from day to day, just from day to day […] surrender completely to the moments as they pass [and] live more richly the moments.**
(Anne Morrow Lindbergh)

To the hurry, add slowness,
To the noise, silence,
In the crowdedness, find solitude,
May your computers live alongside
Inky pens and journals,
May life’s lists of words
Have doodles and pictures added,
Let deep listening
Accompany all the posting.
And when seriousness threatens,
Play, play, play.

It’s that time of year when we try to take a new direction, to fill the year differently.

We think we must take it all very seriously if we are to succeed, but our greatest aid is our playfulness.

Make it a game, a game to explore and include all of who you are for as long as possible, and when the rules you began with threaten to exclude you or bring the game to an early close, change the rules.

And, wherever possible, play with others.

(*From Johan Huizinga’s Homo Ludens.)
(**Anne Morrow Lindbergh, quoted in the Northumbria Community‘s Morning Prayer.)

May you never be isolated but know the embrace
Of your anam cara.*
(John O’Donohue)

You have a squad, but it’s small and not everyone in your squad is going to agree or do the same thing.  But, truthfully, you hate those kind of squads anyway.**
(Steve Alley)

As I complete an online workshop, one of the things I want to do is connect with a handful of people from among the thousands that have been involved, to talk slowly into the new year about the things we’re trying to make happen.

Anam cara is Gaelic for soul friend, the kind of person who gets what we’re about.  They may be quite unlike us but that’s an important feature in this tribe.

A lot of what we will be doing will find us on our own, but to know there’s a group of people who understand this and are there for us, is huge.

Brené Brown shares this interesting conversation between Maya Angelou and Bill Moyers:

‘MOYERS: Do you belong anywhere?
ANGELOU: I haven’t yet.
MOYERS: Do you belong to anyone?
ANGELOU: More and more.  I mean, I belong to myself.  I’m very proud of that.  I am very concerned about how I look at Maya.  I like Maya very much.  I like the humour and courage very much.  And when I find myself acting in a way that isn’t … that doesn’t please – then I have to deal with that.’**

As we journey into 2019, may we be faithful to who we are and what we must do.

But know there are others out there who would be there for you, if they could be, encouraging you on and thankful for your encouragement of them.  They’re not “yes  people” but they are your tribe, trying to make some kind of dint in the world’s you are.

We don’t go into the new year alone; perhaps finding one another is one of the things the year will include for us.

(*From John O’Donohue’s Anam Cara.)
(**Brené Brown’s husband Steve Alley, quoted in Brené Brown’s Braving the Wilderness.)
(^From Brené Brown’s Braving the Wilderness.)

Presence is about observation, presencing, and realising.*
(Senge, Scharmer, Jaworski and Flowers)

I … a universe of atoms … an atom in the universe**
(Richard Feynman)

Everyone has a different presence to bring.

For a while, a few moments in eternity, we bring our particular beauty into view …. and then it is gone.

It is quite unlike the particular beauties of others, made up of the things we have dropped into our “cluttered drawers” over the years, sometimes purposefully, other times because we don’t know where else to put something.  I borrow “cluttered drawers” from Anne Lamott:

‘But it comes from within, from love, from the flow of the universe; from inside the cluttered drawers.’^

No-one’s drawer is empty; that would be to say it is possible to live without experiencing.  It’s about how and what kind of story we bring together from what we find in the drawer.

(*From Peter Senge, Otto Scharmer, Joseph Jaworski and Betty Sue Flowers’ Presence.)
(**Richard Feynman, quoted in Maria Popova’s Brain Pickings: The Universe as an Infinite Storm of Beauty.)
(^From Anne Lamott’s Hallelujah Anyway.)

Every developing human child rests, like all developing beings, in the womb of the great mother – the undifferentiated, not yet formed primal world.  From this it detaches itself to enter a personal life, and it is only in dark hours when we slip out of this again (as happens even to the healthy, night after night), that we are close to her again.’*
(Martin Buber)

We’re all different but it doesn’t just happen.

I read and listen to others every day, noticing how they are different.

I don’t want to be like them; they are helping me to find my different.

It begins with our curiosity, as my friend Alex says, “We are a mystery wrapped in a question.”

Each one of us.

(*From Martin Buber’s I and Thou.)