Life is a journey opening to those prepared to go deeper.

Over the years, I’ve been learning that continual seriousness is as much an inhibitor of “deep” as always joking around.  Like the spacecraft returning to Earth, needing to get its angle of re-entry just right so that it doesn’t bounce off the atmosphere or burn up, so we need to have the right amount of serious so as not to bounce off into impotence, and the right amount of levity so as not to burn up everything and everyone we come into contact with.

I’m learning to lighten up.

Just as I’m learning alacrity from others, I’ve a number of people in my life that teach how how to lighten up.  I’m also reminded that one of the important things I took from Mindfulness was to be kind to others and to myself.

Then I can have some fun getting to grips with some serious business:

“What does the world need most … that we are uniquely able to provide?”*

Getting the angle right is about servanthood, it means we can ask, “What more can I do?”

(*From Warren Berger’s A More Beautiful Question.)

Brisk and cheerful readiness.

To turn up every day with alacrity isn’t easy, it’s about many things being attended to.

Yet, when we’re able to turn up with alacrity, then the next day holds even more promise.

We have to daily identify and reconnect with what we are most concerned for and care about.

Living as if we’ve seen all there is to see and we know all there is to know is a dangerous place.  Being jaded and disenchanted means we fall short of magis – more: the promise of tomorrow.

‘Living with doubt is always more profitable than living with certainty.’*

We like it when those around us turn up with alacrity, which is significant, because most of what the future holds is going to be made up of people working together.

I can also trust what my life is saying to me when I am seeking to connect with all that matters most to me, to others, and to the world.

Alacrity provides us with momentum, to push us from what we know and what we love into what we do.

(*From Seth Godin’s Whatcha Gonna Do With That Duck?)

‘It was a calling to something greater than himself, some thing other than himself.’*

‘There is a mission out there greater than yourself.’**

What do you see on the horizon?  If you keep along this path?

Cleverness has never been the problem – we’re all pretty clever.

The problem is wisdom.  Our choices have brought us to a place we couldn’t have imagined, and now? Defeat?

We can change the horizon.

Maybe we can spend a lot of time lamenting our mistakes and trying to undo them, or maybe we can identify something greater than ourselves to live for – and sort out anything we need to about ourselves along the way.

Chris Guillebeau tells the story of Jiro Ono, a top restaurant owner who tells Guillebeau he feels victorious when he finds a good tuna to sushi, which may seem a strange way to talk about his work; Guillebeau comments:

‘I also got the message: The man loves what he does.’**

A new horizon comes into view when we find ourselves on a quest to something greater than ourselves.

(*From Alex McManus‘s Discipleship in the Way of Jesus.)
(**From Chris Guillebeau’s The Happiness of Pursuit.)

Life.  It’s all about service, and it’s all about identifying our kind of creativity and going for it.

And these two things can live together … beautifully.

When we engage in service and creativity, we’re engaging in a human revolution.  We’re on the cusp of the next stage of becoming human: to be both conscious and caring and creative.

‘It is here where the synergistic interplay of courage, wisdom, and generosity make us most creative.’*

The story we’re telling ourselves is far more important than the history we find ourselves inheriting.  History is what others have done, but we get to shape the story now.

‘[T]he leader may be any one of us.’**

Here, if we choose to accept it, is our mission.

(*From Erwin McManus’s Uprising.)
(**From Rosamund and Benjamin Zander’s The Art of Possibility.)

What do you fear most of all?

Sometimes smaller fears get in the way of the things that are worth getting fearful over – like the fear of missing out on living the one life we have in a way that makes a difference, perhaps the greatest adventure of all: “bold innovation, limitless generosity, and the opportunity to save a life.”*

This journey witnesses us crossing the thresholds of judgement to openness, cynicism to compassion, and, fear to courage – into curiosity and inquiry, relationship, and action.

“Things change when you care enough to grab whatever you love, and give it everything.”*

What we think is the safest place to be can turn out to be the most dangerous.

Yesterday, I caught something of Jurgen Todenhofer’s story, how this writer and retired judge from Germany wanted to see the other side of the Islamic State story, successfully negotiating ten days within the caliphate.^

He brings his story back to all of us who want to understand more of what life within this region looks like, even as we try to imagine the future.  This journey wasn’t into Mediocristan, but into Extremistan, where, each night, he didn’t know what awaited him the following day.^^

As I listened to his extraordinary experience, I saw Todenhofer’s journey as one of servanthood for others, for the “powers that be” and for each of us.

Maybe we think we live in “Calmistan” – where everything is in its rightful place.  While Todenhofer’s story is extreme, reality is we all live in a world of randomness and chaos, every day wrestling it to some kind of order.  Calmistan does not exist – the ordering of chaos that has served is in the past will not serve us now.  We need imaginative, creative people, willing to overcome their lesser fears to face the greatest one of all.

[P]ersonally, I think the person who can’t change his or her mind is dangerous.’*^

(*The subtitle of End Malaria.)
(**Music student Amanda Burr to Ben Zander, quote in Rosamund and Benjamin Zander’s The Art of Possibility.)
(^See Jurgen Todenhofer’s My Journey Into the Heart of Terror.)
(^^Mediocristan and Extremistan are concepts of randomness and chaos identified by Nassim Taleb in The Black Swan.)
(^^From Ed Catmull’s Creativity, Inc.)

‘Wisdom is not a shift from me to you, but a shift from me to us.’*

What if wisdom exists in the following forms?

Wisdom 1.0: Often passed from others and seen as good enough for was we want to do in life, so lacks questioning; it’s expressed in heuristics and doesn’t worry too much about what others think.

Wisdom 2.0: There’s more wisdom than we first thought – it can be made to work for us and change our circumstances, and, to some extent, used for the good of others; wisdom is a valuable commodity and is scalable.

Wisdom 3.0: Wisdom exists in everyone, even in our planet and the universe, so we begin exploring what wisdom looks like from the perspective of others, stepping into their shoes; wisdom isn’t so scarce, and we have come a long way from the monochrome “wisdom according to me.”

Wisdom 4.0: Wisdom is far from fixed, it’s unfolding, and more, it’s something we discover and create and live within together; wisdom is abundant because there’s always more to come, it’s increasingly inclusive, abides in all relationships, and new relationships are constantly being formed within it.

What if Wisdom 4.0 is our future?  A future of endless, unfolding possibilities for making all things thrive?

(*From Erwin McManus’s Uprising. Erwin’s “me and you” and “me and us” echoes Otto Scharmer’s “I-in-me,” “I-in-you,” and “I-in-us”; Otto also has “I-in-it” between the first two: see his Theory U.)

“If I start on a film and right away know the structure – where it’s going, the plot – I don’t trust it.  I feel like the only reason we’re able to find some of these unique ideas, characters, and story twists is through discovery.  And by definition ‘discovery’ means you don’t know the answer when you start.”*

How do we navigate the unknown?  Warren Berger ponders whether mission questions may be more helpful to us than mission statements.**

Wisdom is the elegant solution: a simplicity found on the far side of complexity.

It can all appear magical, but there’s no wizardry involved.  It’s wisdom’s ability to connect past and present and future that makes the difference.

‘To my mind, randomness is not just inevitable, it is part of the beauty of life.  Acknowledging it and appreciating it helps us respond constructively when we are surprised.’^

When we’re prepared to reflect on our past, even upon its ugliness, it becomes fuel for the fire we make for the future; when we’re unable to do this, what has happened is unavailable or of no use to us.

Our ability to learn from our mistakes leads to being grateful for their lessons, leading to new possibilities through experimenting and practise towards the unknown of the future – no longer a repeat of the past.

(*Up’s director Pete Docter, quoted in Ed Catmull’s Creativity, Inc.)
(**See Warren Berger’s A More Beautiful Question.)
(^From Ed Catmull’s Creativity, Inc.)

‘Live the questions now.’*

‘The heart of wisdom is motivated by the need of others.’**

We may think wisdom is found in answers, but it is more strongly encountered in questions.

When wisdom is not so much about what we know but how we live, then this may be one of the most powerful, catalytic question we can ask:

“What do you want/need?”

It holds the notion that somehow I can serve you – expressing the wisdom of humility.

It hopes that I have something to give to you – expressing the wisdom of awareness or gratitude for what I have.

It believes I will somehow find ways to deliver what I have – expressing the wisdom of faithfulness in discipline and creativity.

We can live for a lifetime in questions like this.

(*Rainer Maria Rilke, quoted in the Northumbria Community’s Morning Prayer, 11/4/16.)
(**From Erwin McManus’s Uprising.)

Take your time.  Go slowly.

Good advice or bad?

It looks like bad advice before the fact.

But when it’s how we make progress within an idea we’ve begun to pursue, or a journey we have intentionally set out on, then it potentially is dynamic advice – taking the long view, understanding there are many elements and stages and choices to be made.

To love everything is to love nothing, that is, to love it by knowing it deeply and fully.

As advice for the long haul, it believes that setting out a year for accomplishing something that hasn’t been engaged in before is more powerful than setting out aimlessly – like an expedition with out planning: it’s possible, but the odds are stacked against us.

It understands that reflection on progress is at least as important as the experiences, and that humility, gratitude and faithfulness provide powerful means to do this – that is, making deep reflection possible.

It has a feeling that at the end of the journey there’ll be the beginning of another – becoming part of something that is phenomenal.

Here’s one online dictionary’s attempt to describe a phenom:

“Money must be funny in a rich man’s world,” sang Abba.

‘Money is … a universal medium of exchange that enables people to convert almost everything into almost anything else. … Money is accordingly a system of mutual trust, and not just any system of mutual trust: money is the most universal and most efficient system of mutual trust ever devised‘*

We all know how really useful money is.  Money makes it possible for us to exchange, store, and transport wealth easily, safely, and cheaply.  But this week money has been all about the Panama Papers, particularly how wealthy individuals hide their wealth from prying eyes.

Yuval Noah Harari estimates that there’s $60 trillion of money wealth in the world, but only about $6 trillion comprised banknotes and coins – the rest is electronic data.

I breathe in and breathe out.

Some believe money and/or wealth is everything – not so much in what they say, but in how they act.

I breathe in and breathe out.

Here are the basics for everything else: I get to breathe every day, and with breathing comes a plethora of possibilities.  But often I unaware of this gift which makes everything possible.  Hidden by our sophisticated complexity, your real wealth is stolen away.  I end up wrongly believing I need more before I can do what I want to do.

I breathe in and breathe out.

If I can begin something with what I have, with an abundance of spirit, then, if I receive some funding from somewhere, it simply means I may be able to do more.

Money can’t help here.  I can’t buy an abundance of spirit, so overcoming a poverty of spirit.

I breathe in and breathe out.

I recognise the skills and talents I have, the dreams, the friendships, the experiences in life.

I breathe in and breathe out.

I recognise the skills and talent, the dreams, the friendships, the experiences in life others have.

We breathe in and out.

We imagine and we try, and we see how much more there is.

(*From Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens.)