‘”We measure everything, including ourselves, by comparisons,: and in the absence of someone with outstanding ability there is a risk that we easily come to believe we are excellent. … Mediocre people may appear big to themselves (and to others) if they are surrounded by small circumstances.  By the same taken, big people feel dwarfed in the company of giants, and this is a most useful feeling.  … I have no doubt that I owe this good fortune to the circumstance that I had an outstanding teacher at the critical stage of my scientific career.” … Of the 286 Nobel laureates named between 1901 and 1972, forty-one percent had a master or senior collaborator who was also a Nobelist.’*

‘Don’t worry, you’re not the first one to have a really creative idea that’s mostly someone else’s idea with a few tweaks.  That’s innovation.’**

All of us are able to follow giants – not to be confused with celebrities who have giant reputations.

We may work individually but we can all benefit by establishing and utilising connection with others.  These kinds of apprenticeship don’t have to be formalised: we can follow people’s work on the internet or through their writings – we may even meet up occasionally over coffee with those who can teach us.

Neither do these apprenticeships have to be within our specific domain – when we’re prepared to cross into another, some of the most interesting things begin to happen.

This leads on the recognise there are many possibilities for mutual-apprenticeships, in which everyone is learning from everyone else.

When we give ourselves to lifetime apprenticeships, we’re also giving ourselves to mastery.  When we stop knowing and begin wondering, we’re being an apprentice developing our own style, our own art.

“Old men ought to be explorers
Here and there does not matter
We must be still and still moving
Into another intensity
For another vision, a deeper
communion”^

(*From Alan Lightman’s Dance For Two, quoting Nobelist Hans Kreb writing in 1953 about his Nobel Prize and his teacher Nobelist Ott Warburg, a student of Nobelist Emil Fischer.)
(**From Hugh Macleod’s gapingvoid.com.  Hugh is one of my masters.  His books Ignore Everybody, Freedom is Blogging in Your Underwear, and Evil Plans, stirred a love for doodling I didn’t know was in me.)
(^T. S. Eliot, quoted in Richard Rohr’s Falling Upward.)

“If people would but do what they have to do, they would always find themselves ready for what came next.”*

This is an increasement.  We are capable of more than we imagine.

‘Social media ask us to represent ourselves in simplified ways.  And then, faced with an audience, we feel pressure to conform to these simplifications.**

This is a decreasement, a reduction.  We are less than we can be.

‘Technology can degrade (and endanger) every aspect of a sucker’s life while convincing him that it is becoming more efficient. … The difference between technology and slavery is that slaves are fully aware that they are not free. … Most modern efficiencies are deferred punishment.’^

Friedensreich Hundertwasser‘s fifth skin^^ is the global environment of ecology and humankind.  Reality is nature and it makes sense to live in harmony with our planet – What on earth do you think you’re doing?  With a consumption rate of 1.5 planets, something’s going to give.  Earth waits to see whether we’re going to run ourselves off the planet – giving it a chance to recover over several million years – or whether we’re giong to try and stick around a little longer.

“[M]ay you walk neither too slow nor too fast but always according to the laws and the requirements of the Road.”*^

‘When we embrace our responsibilities, we open up our opportunities.’^*

Hundertwasser lays out the possibility of alignment in our lives – alignment with those around us, with our planet, and with ourselves, – leading to an increasement.

This feels like what Richard Rohr calls the “sacrament of the present moment.”⁺  Every new generation has to revisit and rediscover this place of possibility.  Whilst we can learn from the struggles of those who have travelled the Road before us, the challenges are constantly changing, shifting, morphing.

Alan Lightman describes an increasement moment really well for us.  The young Lightmans’s been struggling with a research problem which just doesn’t want to open to him.  As someone who choose to explore both science and mystery, he writes:

‘I woke up about five a.m. and couldn’t sleep.  I felt terribly excited.  Something strange was happening in my mind.  I was thinking about my research problem, and I was seeing deeply into it.  I was seeing it in ways I never had before. … And I had absolutely no sense of my self.  It was an experience completely without ego, without any thought about consequences or approval or fame.’⁺⁺

We’re rediscovering how to align  to those things which make life richer, stronger.  I began the first of five blogs pondering the words of Joseph Campbell who said that mythology for our time would be difficult to find for some time – things are changing to0 fast to be mythologised.

I wrote about how Hundertwasser’s five skins have a feeling of reaching for a personal and societal mythology to live within.  Campbell pointed to myth having four functions: the mystical (we are people of wonder), cosmological (science filled with the mystical), sociological (supporting social order), and pedagogical (how to live a human lifetime).

There are other myths forming, but this is one: to align our lives to ourselves, to our outside world, to our creativity beyond straight lines, to one another, and to our planet, is more than useful for some increasement.

(*George MacDonald, quoted in the Northumbria Community‘s Morning Prayer.)
(**From Sherry Turkle’s Alone Together.)
(^From Nassim Taleb’s The Bed of Procrustes.)
(^^Here are links to the other four: epidermis, clothing, home, identity and social environment.)
(*^The character Madame Lourdes’ blessing on Paulo Coelho in Coelho’s The Pilgrimage.)
(^*From Erwin McManus’ Uprising.)
(⁺See Richard Rohr’s The Naked Now.)
(⁺⁺From Alan Lightman’s A Sense of the Mysterious.)

More than we know.

Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler highlight the benefit of incentive prizes.*  They point out that a prize raises the profile of a challenge, believing the problem to be solvable.  It also unblocks the bottlenecks caused by the usual small number of participants being increased by new people coming to play.  These people also widen the field, from beginners to experts, including people who bring their knowledge to the party from another field.  Yet another benefit is that openness to risk and failure grows so the range of approaches increases.

The question has changed, from, “What’s in it for me?” to “Do I have a contribution to bring?”  The challenge or problem is the thing that focuses human imagination, ingenuity, innovation, and creativity.

‘It is however, through difficulty and opposition that we define ourselves.  The mind needs something against which it can profile and discover itself.’**

‘The noble use all that they are and all that they have for the good of others.’^

Life grows bigger as we give ourselves to a problem beyond ourselves.

Friedensreich Hundertwasser’s fourth skin^^ is one of personal identity and our social environment – how we’re different from each other and connect with our environment without conforming to it. For Hundertwasser, there has to be freedom from the moral and ideological bondage of rational thinking if we are to be creative in our own way and change the world.  There’s also the need to connect with a company or tribe of people with whom we journey.  This not only makes it possible to bring our contribution but augments it, too.

(*See Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler’s Bold.)
(**From John O’Donohue’s Eternal Echoes.)
(^From Erwin McManus’s Uprising.)
(^^Here are the links to the first three skins: epidermis, clothes, home.)

Friedensreich Hundertwasser’s third skin is our home (see my last two blogs for the first two: epidermis and clothes).  Not believing in straight lines – to him they were godless and immoral – his aim was to incorporate the forms of nature in architectural design.

I take from this is to beware the straight lines some insist upon.

‘if we’re not careful, we can join a group that indulges our selfishness, one that pushes us to be callous or shortsighted.  To become part of the mob or the insolent bystanders. … once on the path, the culture is difficult to change’*

‘With homework problems, the answer was known.  If you couldn’t solve the problem yourself, you could look up the answer in the back of the bool pr ask a smarter student for help.’**

Sometimes more turns out to be less.  Then again, we wish we’d taken that opportunity that came along instead of giving into fear.  And what about when we just don’t know where to look.

But we’ve made our decisions, drawn our lines, and everything is tidy, though it could be tidier.

Individuals, as well as groups, organisations, parties, industries and businesses argue how it’s hard to survive and function without fixing a few lines in place.  They can control the lines they say but, before they know it, the lines are controlling them.   Reality is, lines beget more lines, and then it becomes harder to remain open to the possibility of there being more outside of the lines – more ways to see this and that, more people who’ve a contribution to make, more ways to work together rather than being those who know the answer and everybody else just needs to get it – to get in line.

Once static lines are drawn, it’s very hard to remain dynamic.

Life is best when we are working on problems whose answers are not known and we have to connect and work with people who are not like us (and never will be).  Few, though, find the path of many questions.

(**From Seth Godin’s blog The Best of Us (The Worst of Us).)
(^From Alan Lightman’s A Sense of the Mysterious.)

‘I’d want to tell her that sometimes we have to mourn the future, that many young couples have more future than present.’*

An endless, open future may not be the best thing to have.  It may lead to not getting serious about now.

As I get older my relationship with the future is changing.  There’s not nearly so much of it these days and I must use what there is carefully, not allowing my personal to be formless or fantasy, or to be shaped by others for me.

Yesterday, I began to contemplate Friedensreich Hundertwasser’s five skins.  The first is epidermis and, for me, highlighted the need to be comfortable in our own skin.  The second skin is clothing – Hundertwasser rejected the consumer society that hands people their clothing, calling on people instead to express their creativity in what they wear by their own hands.

I don’t think I’d trust the kind of clothes I might make for myself t remain stitched but there is something about integrity  here.  How who we appear on the outside, to others, in all our interactions is truly connected with who we are on the inside.

The future then looks different, neither formless or shaped by others but shaped by the learnt skills of anticipation (open to possibilities), reflection Taking time to ponder the possibilities), imagination (the first creation of what might be), synchronisation (aligning our lives to this), design (planning), and creation (living it).

(*From Stephen Grosz’s The Examined Life.)

A few days ago, I was reflecting on Joseph Campbell’s remark made in the 1980’s:

‘We can’t have a mythology for a long, long time to come.  Things are changing too fast to become mythologised.’*  

He couldn’t have foreseen how change would be happening faster and faster – think of what’s happened in the world of politics, the biosphere, and technology since 1986.

My mind went to the five elemental truths Richer Rohr introduced me to some seven or so years ago – these gathered from the rites of passage of ancient societies: life is hard, you’re not as special as you think, your life is not about you, you are not in control, and, you are going to die.**  From a slower time than ours, people were exploring their inner and outer worlds through what we might call myths or grand narratives.

A life without myth and narrative is more likely to be a life without surprises – all answers and no questions.  Myths have made it possible to make great journeys, to encounter new ideas, people, and places – to see more, feel more, and do more.^  This is a journey – myths are about what happens on the way.

“Squint, squint, squint. … It’s all a question of learning to see.”^^

‘We must ask, “What happens because of what happens next?”‘*^

My friend Helen has pointed me in the direction of Friedensreich Hundertwasser‘s thinking about five skins: epidermis, clothes, house, social environment, and planetary. (I think I’ll be exploring one of these each day this week.)

This has a feeling of reaching for a personal and societal mythology to live within.  According to Campbell, myth has four functions: mystical (we are people of wonder), cosmological (science filled with the mystical), sociological (supporting social order), and pedagogical (how to live a human lifetime).

Hundertwasser’s first skin, the epidermis, is about overcoming automatism and the informal in order to see more, including our creative possibility.^*  All of which makes me think about Theory U being a journey from daily downloading of the same old same old and mindfulness‘s journey from living on autopilot.  Specifically, it’s being comfortable in and exploring our own skin –  our way of seeing the world and producing our art.

‘I love what I see.  Life excites me.’⁺

(*From Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers’ The Power of Myth.)
(**From Richard Rohr’s Adam’s Return.  I see each of these truths as needing our personal completion: e.g., life is hard but when we find each other it becomes easier.)
(^As I wrote this sentence down, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel slipped into my mind as an enjoyable way to reflect on this: all the retirees coming to terms with a different place to live, except for penelope Wilton’s character Jean Ainslie who closes herself to every part of the experience.)
(^^Artist Paul Ingbretson, quoted in Alan Lightman’s Dance for Two.  Ingretson was quoting what he had learned from his teacher Ives Gammell.)
(*^From Alex McManus’s Makers of Fire.)
(^*Unfortunately, hundertwasser.com won’t allow for images or text to be used without permission – which feels shortsighted.)
(⁺From Richard Rohr’s The Naked Now.)

‘Once you find the things that you enjoy for you, you won’t need to fill the space with words.’*

‘If we look at what we do best as well as what we want to change the most, we will often find that the two are varying degrees of the same core behaviour.’**

Every day life offers another opportunity for exploration.

If we grab enough of these, pursuing our curiosities and interests, we’ll be able to hold at bay much of the aging process which sees witnesses many growing up without inquisitiveness.  We get to live our questions and the best are “subversive, disruptive and playful.”^

This way of life has a way of bending many things so that they come together: time alters, people come together, needs make themselves known, talents get developed, journeys are made, curiosity grows, and questions lead into quests.

Some are throwing their lot in with technology for providing a richer life – made possible by the ubiquitous smartphone.

‘The twentieth century was the bankruptcy of the social utopia;the twenty-first will be that of the technological one.’^^

We will need many imaginative and innovative ways of expanding the analogue alongside the digital, such as emotional intelligence alongside digital connectivity. walking and wandering to slow things down in an ever faster world, pens and pencils and paper instead of the latest app.  And every day to remind ourselves of the story we’re forming for our lives – taking a few moments to “read” at the beginning of each day but long enough to remind us to grab the opportunity staring at us in a new day dawning.*^

(*From Hugh Macleod’s gapingvoid.)
(**From Brené Brown’s Daring Greatly.)
(^Polly LeBarre, quoted in Warren Berger’s A More Beautiful Question.)
(^^From Nassim Taleb’s The Bed of Procrustes.)
(*^I was thinking of the bedtime stories children have read to them before bedtime, and read again and again because they love the stories so.  Check out Quentin Blake’s Mr Magnolia as an example.  But ours will be for the morning.)

“Live the questions now.  Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, even without noticing it, live your way into the answer.”*

This is about questions and quests.  One leads to the other.  Some quests are hardly noticeable, some alter the trajectory of ur lives – these are the ones I want to focus on.

Peter Diamandis tells of how he was inspired by the story of Charles Lindbergh whose imagination was captured by a competition to build an aircraft capable of crossing the Atlantic.  This in turn stirred Diamandis’s desire to create a craft that could travel into space: ‘my original use of incentive competitions stemmed from my desire to figure out how to get myself into space’.**

There’s something dynamic and exciting about finding the the right questions for our lives – where our deep gladness meets the world’s deep hinger.

This brings vulnerability and we have to move forward to understand vulnerability better.

‘A life that wishes to honour its own possibility has to learn too how to integrate the suffering of dark and bleak times into a dignity of presence. … Vulnerability risks hurt, disappointment and failure.’^^

Answers seek to overcome, domesticate, and civilise.  It’s perhaps why mythologist Joseph Campbell argues we’re lacking mythologies for enlarging our lives:

‘We can’t have a mythology for a long, long time to come.  Things are changing too fast to become mythological. … Myth opens the world to the dimension of mystery, to the realisation of the mystery that underlies all forms.’*^

Please, don’t give up on your questions.  We’re moving towards a new mythology as those who’re opening minds, hearts, and wills.

(*Rainer Maria Rilke, quoted in the Northumbria Community‘s Morning Prayer.)
(**From Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler’s Bold.)
(^The more critical and significant the question, the more it will invoke five elemental truths in pursuing our questions: life is hard, we are not as special as we think, our life is not about us, we are not in control, and we are going to die.  See Richard Rohr’s Adam’s Return.)
(^^From John O’Donohue’s Eternal Echoes.)
(*^From Joseph Campbell and Bill Myers’s The Power of Myth.)

“If you want your dream to be, take your time, go slowly.  Do few things but do them well, heartfelt work grows purely.”*

‘The conviviality of working together protected us from “the damage caused by the fast life.” … Slow philosophy overall should not be interpreted … as “the contrast … between slowness and speed – slow versus fast – but rather between attention and distraction”‘.**

What kind of world do you dream of?

It’s unlikely to come quickly but will involve day after day of turning up in focus and hope and action.

‘We are not called to save the world, solve all problems, and help all people. But we each have our own unique call, in our families, in our work, in our world.’^

And when we find each other we can do more.

How we work together makes all the difference in the world.

Beyond debate lies dialogue and, if we can just slow down and listen to each other in deep openness, there is a generative conversation to be had, make it possible to be changed by the journey.  Such working spaces bring whispers of hope to our world, making it possible for everyone to bring their contribution in a spirit of conviviality.

(*Donovan Leitch, quoted in the Northumbria Community‘s Morning Prayer.)
(**From Maggie Berg and Barbara Seeber’s The Slow Professor, quoting Carlo Pettrini.)
(^Henri Nouwen, from the Henri Nouwen Society.)

‘[Boredom] can be a sign that the patient is avoiding a particular subject; that he or she is unable to talk directly about something intimate or embarrassing.’*

‘To see if you like where you are, without the chains of dependence, check if you are as happy returning as you were leaving.’**

Boredom may sometimes be our lives telling us we’re being too mainstream, avoiding some critical things pushed to the margins of our lives.  Every life has a world of stories within it: some lived, others unlived and discarded, pushed to the margins – where they can be found again.

And when we go to the margins we will not only find ourselves but others too

(*From Stephen Grosz’s The Examined Life.)
(**From Nassim Taleb’s The Bed of Procrustes.)