‘The goldsmith’s role was to tell the truth about disguised substances, as well as to smelt gold from raw ore.’*

Richard Sennett writes about how the wandering mediaeval goldsmith turned his back on the hierarchy of the guilds, in order to search out new opportunities, through skill and character.

Here is a working metaphor for those who long to pursue their own creativity by enabling others to mine and purify their own goodness towards a noble purpose.

Ed Catmull tells of how Steve Jobs was this kind of goldsmith to him:

‘He had made me more focused, more resilient, smarter, better.’**

We all need such people.

Some set themselves aside for such a purpose.  Believing that everyone is worth their weight in gold, they make opportunities available, seeing gold where others only see dirt.

(*From Richard Sennett’s The Craftsman.)
(**From Ed Catmull’s Creativity, Inc..)

‘Can a broken robot break a child?’*

‘Apple was his first and most heralded professional achievement; Pixar was a place he could relax a little and play.  While he never lost his intensity, we watched him develop the ability to listen.  More and more, he could express empathy and caring and patience.  He became truly wise.  The change in him was real, and it was deep.’**

Whether we’re fermenting, processing, or manufacturing, humans are makers par excellence from the raw materials we find in our world, but our greatest achievements are our inventions of love.

Twelve year old Estelle is upset by a malfunctioning Kismet, believing that the robot does not like her.  Leon is the same age, but is over-the-moon with a responsive Cog: “He heard me!  He heard me!”*  We are making robots now, and these two children are telling us, above all, how these robots relate to them is most important of all.

At the end of his book telling the story of Pixar, Ed Catmull wants to  share something about the Steve Jobs he knew: for all his achievements, it was the relational Jobs that he wants to remember above all.

The best of all achievements are about how we learn to regard and serve one another.

(*From Sherry Turkle’s Alone Together.)
(**From Ed Catmull’s Creativity, Inc..)

‘The belief that unhappiness is selfless and happiness is selfish is misguided.  It takes energy, generosity, and discipline … .’*

Happiness is hard work and hard work can produce happiness.  Somehow, this game is built into the universe, and we’re still learning how to play.

Ever felt guilty for being happy when others are not, or have felt your happiness is unsustainable and has to evaporate, you’re not alone.  It is the ‘universal human instinct and seen in nearly all cultures – the dread of invoking cosmic anger by calling attention to good fortune.’*

But what if the universe is set up for engaging in the kind of happiness that can make a difference for others – we do something, we act, we serve?

What we’ll be discovering is how happiness is tied up with skills and talents, with passions and values and experiences, with character and connectedness.

(*From Gretchen Ruben’s The Happiness Project.)

Nothing hopeful ever does.

The young tree bends in the wind, each gust making it stronger.

If only we were like trees, but we’re not.

Consciousness comes with choice, and we can choose to break.

Or we can choose to become super-hard, but there’s little imagination and creativity with super-thick skin and an armour-plated heart.

We can, however, choose to become strong, imaginative, creative, and graceful.

Our characters develop through our struggles, and hope emerges out of our characters when they refuse to be overcome; instead of turning bitter and cynical, we choose to bring something beautiful into the world.

Beauty never comes easy.

“PERSIST.  PERSIST in telling your story.  PERSIST in reaching your audience.  PERSIST in staying true to your vision … .”

‘There is only one way to assess a vision: what is attained relative to what might be attained without the vision.’**

“Have patience with everything§ unresolved in your heart … .”^

The future is a journey we make.

It is not something we imagine.

We each are made for something more: lives shaping the future for others through quests for honour, nobility, and enlightenment.

We can give up, though, because we never seem to arrive.  But our future is never the destination we think it is.  Just by moving, any possible future changes – and we have to move for it to be a journey.  Every step changes the whatever possibilities we think of as being the future.   What may surprise us, when we look back along the way we’ve been walking, is just how much stuff we’ve done.

(*Pixar animator Austin Madison, quoted in Ed Catmull’s Creativity, Inc..)
(**From Peter Senge’s The Necessary Revolution.)
(^Rainer Maria Rilke, quoted in the Northumbria Community‘s Morning Prayer.)

“If you want your dream to be
Take your time, go slowly”*

‘The future is not a destination – it is a direction.’**

Whatever the day ahead is known to contain for you, it’s crucial to return to your story: who you are becoming, what it is you must do, how these connect and stimulate one another in the energy of your life.

It’s a strange thing, but the more we connect to and develop our stories, the more we find ourselves in a larger story – making sense of why we’re here in the universe – including the larger stories of groups and organisations, and the best of these will always invite our unique contribution, as Michael Heppell encourages:.

‘The trick is to find people who complement each other rather than putting up with those who detract.’^

Thanks for reading; time to get back to your story.

(*Donovan Leitch, quoted in the Northumbria Community‘s Morning Prayer.)
(**From Ed Catmull’s Creativity, Inc..)
(^From Michael Heppell’s How to be Brilliant.)

Each of us was formed in a hidden, secret place.  Our parents had to be patient for around nine months to catch their first sight of us.  The mystery and wonder of this doesn’t escape us.

These words – hidden, secret, mystery, wonder – continue to be descriptors for our lives because the future is hidden within us.  Not what we have done or who we have been, but what we will do and our future Self.

Every day is an opportunity to bring to birth, your “deepest, as yet unborn, self.”*

(*An unnamed contributor to Gretchen Ruben’s blog, quoted in The Happiness Project.)

There is breath and there is zingy breath.

More than a Status Quo classic, deeper and down is about connecting our breath to our passion in a way that takes us on a journey.

Everyone has talents that can be deepened.  Pamela Slim caught my eye back in 2012 with a comment about only needing to identify something we can do that is an inch wide and a mile deep.*  This has stuck with me ever since.  Everyone has a passionate skill that is an inch (2.54 centimetres) wide.  The magic happens when it’s taken deeper. For me, my inch wide is simply about showing people something of how amazing they are – I then simply take this deeper.

What is your inch wide talent and passion?

(*See Pamela Slim’s Escape from Cubicle Nation.)

‘The sociologist Alejandro Portes observes about modern economic migrants that they tend to be entrepreneurial in spirit; the passive stay home.  This migratory dynamism was built into mediaeval goldsmithing.’*

“We didn’t just want to make lists of cool things we could do.   The goal was to identify passionate people who would take ideas forward.  We wanted to put people with clever insights in front of Pixar’s executive team.”**

It’s not about some people being passive and others being entrepreneurial.^   It’s about noticing where we’re passive and where we’re entrepreneurial.

A characteristic of being human is that we strive.  We have to overcome something, and we take risks in order to do this.^^

Striving and risks are the the means by which we create the best human stories when they recognise the spine or narrative arc of our personal story.

It doesn’t matter that I might stay at home when it comes to the thing you’re excited about; the important thing is that you don’t stay home, that you travel to the edges and bring your discoveries home for everyone.

(*From Richard Sennett’s The Craftsman.)
(**Tom Porter, quoted in Ed Catmull’s Creativity, Inc..)
(^Admittedly, some people do passively go through the entirety of their lives, whilst others go through their lives pushing, pushing, pushing.)
(^^Taking risks looks different on the inside for the person undertaking it, than for the person looking in from the outside.  In Entrepreneurial StrengthsFinder, Jim Clifton and Sangeeta Bharadwaj Badal list six things risk-takers do in order to mitigate risk: they know what they know and what they don’t know; take incremental risks; watch out for the “confirmation bias;” imagine various scenarios to see possible futures; do not gamble; and, ignore the unimportant projects.)

The Christian theologian Augustine came up with the doctrine of original sin, the idea that life begins corrupted and needs redeeming.

My preference is for the doctrine of original goodness: people are amazing, capable of astonishing feats of great beauty and kindness.

I admit, though, it doesn’t explain everything.  The kind of things resulting from our pride and greed and foolishness make for horrible messes.

We all need some way of explaining our goodness and our badness; it’s how we keep moving forward.

What’s most important is how we think about the future; not what we have been but what we can be.  We can relive the past, if we wish, but the future hasn’t happened.  We get to shape it.  It’s where we all get to change.   And how we imagine the future alters our behaviours in the present.

Future benders are those who manage to keep turning up in anticipation of something good happening.  When enough people turn up for this work, maybe then, we’ll see what we are made of.