I asked MC why she wants to develop her work idea, what was the thing driving it – our small group was exploring how to prototype our ideas.

I smiled at her response and have tried to capture it here:

“To help people create a beautiful life in which they are making progress.”

A long way back in Human history there was a time when our consciousness developed to the extent that we began to enjoy the beauty of something rather than its usefulness.  This matters because it’s tied to seeing the beauty in a Human life, rather than the simple functionality of carbon units.

There’s something about the universe which asks us to appreciate beauty: fauna, flora, music, numbers, art, colour, you, me.  Beauty is so very big, it is very high and wide and deep.  It cannot be reduced to just these things on this list.

Whenever anyone explores the beauty of their story beyond functionality and usefulness, that can’t be bad.

It can be pretty darn good.

One more thing: beauty isn’t something we’re born with – it’s a choice we make every day.

Gifts make their difference when they begin to flow – the unique contributions everyone can bring as an investment in the world.

High-flow environments come in many different forms.

One person can choose to be just such an environment to another – provoking by giving their gift.  Two or more people can collaborate together in a synthesis of their gifts to others.  Physical spaces can be designed to encourage gifts to flow.  And a community can exist as a result of, and with the purpose of, encouraging the flow of gifts.

In each case of these the consequences are high – this matters; there’s a richness of complexity present (the more diverse the better), and, there’s encouragement of mind, heart, and will presencing – we not only think and feel something, we do something.

Of course, high-flow and high-risk means there’s the risk of failure, but we do pay more attention (including learning how learning from failure is more important than not failing).  High flow environments promise to produce communities, with ties stronger than any commodity exchange.

Here are three thoughts from different sources I happened to be reading today:

‘Ideas do not circulate freely when they are treated as commodities.’*

‘Everyone wants to be noticed, recognised and celebrated.’**

“To reach flow, one must be filling to take risks. … the average person – you and me – must be willing to fail, look foolish. and fall flat on our faces should we wish to enter this state.”^

(*From Lewis Hyde’s The Gift.)
(**From Rohit Bhargava’s Non-Obvious.)
(^Psychiatrist Ned Hallowell, quoted in Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler’s Bold.)

I’m with those who hope for a new renaissance – including and inviting people to make their contribution towards a future which will see an increasing flow of knowledge and skills as gifts.

The really exciting things will happen when the barriers come down between communities and organisations, in the creative synthesis and messiness of connectedness, regardless of field, age, gender, ethnicity, sexuality, politics, geography, and a whole lot more.

Almost forty years ago, Charles Mellis wrote about how ‘creative new vehicles seldom originate within the establishment – particularly in times of great change’.*  If Mellis is right then it makes no sense to be closed to what others know and are willing to share.

Find a party, bring your passion and skill – the future awaits.

(*From Charles Mellis’s Committed Communties.)

The Kwakiuti people conferred names according to whether a person gave property – e.g., “For Whom Property Flows” (an elevated name), or received property – “Creating Trouble All Round” (a lowered name).*

It made me wonder, what might be the names given to those who gift their gift?

Just a few days ago, I heard about a group of friends, who, at the end of their work meeting had some fun with trying to name one another.

I love this.  I belong to a mentoring community who do just this.  After being and learning together, they seek to confer names on one another.  A person cannot choose their own name but may receive or reject the name offered to them.  It’s based on valuing the things discovered in each person.

Here’s a contrasting story.  In his 2015 Non-Obvious Trends report, Rohit Bhargava identifies one of his trends as Everyday Stardom, observing how companies – including Disney with its magic band – are aiming ‘to allow customers to feel like superstars with every branded interaction.’**

The first example – of the Kwakiuti and my friends- are about gift communities conferring names in response to members gifting their gifts.  The second example of everyday stardom is a commercial purchase of a story, a name, an experience.  Have fun with it, but the danger is missing out on the incredible story already in every person.

We might call this issue dubbing – from the experience of trying to voiceover a film of TV programme – the problem being producing something “overdone, over dramatic, or overladen with emotion,”^ leading to an experience which appears to be “feigned, false, prefabricated.”^^

When you gift your gift, you are already an everyday star.

(*From Lewis Hyde’s The Gift.)
(**From Rohit Bhargava’s Non-Obvious.)
(^Author Candace Whitman-Linsen, quoted in Charlotte Bosseaux’s Dubbing, Film and Performance.)
(^^Frederic Chaume, quoted in Charlotte Bosseaux’s Dubbing, Film and Performance.)

“In all our studies of extreme performance improvement, the people and organisations who covered the most distance in the shortest time were aways the ones who were tapping into passion and finding flow.”*

Vital gifts are for others.  We can’t give them to ourselves, but there are benefits.  We get to grow up to the gift – who we become, and how we become a generative being.

Rohit Bhargava says of those who want to predict the future: ‘you will become more curious, observant and understanding of the world.’**  We can claim these same things as benefits of growing up to, or being worthy of, the gift.

In becoming worthy of the gift we must open our minds, our hearts and our wills.  Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler list a number of “mind hacks” which they claim increases focus, and focus is important because ‘flow follows focus.^ Here they are: focus on the user; share everything; look for ideas everywhere; think big bit start small; never fail to fail; spark with imagination, rule with data; be a platform [for others]; and, have a mission that matters.^

We can also grab these because flow is what happens when we’re completely immersed in giving our gift to to others.  This may all sound like an indulgence to those who have lists of urgent things to do, believing doing the things which energise them is something that will have to wait for the future, but futurists know the only time for pursuing what energises us is now.

(*Author and consultant John Hagel, quoted in Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler’s Bold.)
(**From Rohit Bhargava’s Non-Obvious.)
(^From Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler’s Bold.)

When you spontaneously respond to the need of another, take note of what you specifically want to give.

This is probably your gift.

Fast gifts are fast because it’s as if you don’t even have to decide to make them.  Usually to those who are close or from your gift seeking opportunities to be given.

And gifts want to create community, taking us beyond those we now to include the stranger:

‘It is when someone’s gift stirs us that we are brought close, and what moves us beyond the gift itself, is the promise (or the fact) of transformation, friendship, or love.’*

I could have written about the playfulness of the gift.  Serious playfulness extending an ecosystem that is the infinite game (the game which includes more for as long as possible – which sounds like community) through each person bringing their unique gift, fast.

(*From Lewis Hyde’s The Gift.)

Worth here is not the same as value – it comes from the sense of being worthy.  We tend to use it to mean value – “What’s this worth?” – but, really, it expresses pricelessness – literally, this can’t be priced.

I’m writing this on a four year old macbook.  How much would I ask for it? I’m not sure, but not the same as for a new one.  That’s the thing about value, it allows me to compare this with that.

But a gift is incomparable.

To become comparable it crosses a threshold, usually from within a group to without:

Lewis Hyde suggests something else happens when a gift becomes a commodity: I have to detach myself from it if is to become a commodity with a price tag: “It’s nothing personal.”

Pride commoditises people: I see myself in comparison with others and I’m establishing boundaries.  Humility allows me to see my worth without comparison, refusing boundaries.  Greed then follows pride because I need to gather and store more on my side of the boundary, but gratitude sees abundance as something we share.

‘What happens when you’re afraid to stand out is that you unconsciously make sure you blend in.’*

This last thought may appear contradictory but the one who stands out is the one who doesn’t posture and position, who brings their gift or superpower to the game or party for the good of all and not for the good of the few.

This is really about you.  A person, not a commodity.  Worthy and without a price tag.  With a unique boon, necessary and transformative for our time.

(*From Bernadette Jiwa’s Make Your Idea Matter.)

We’re submerged in a world of gifts and giveaways.  Maybe we need to distinguish: a vital gift is a transformative gift.

An unusual place to go, but 14th century Christian mystic Meister Eckhart spoke about how “the fruitfulness of a gift is the only gratitude for the gift.”*  this sounds like a description of a vital gift.

I’ve had many tell me that to gift my work to someone, rather than charging them for it, will mean they won’t value it.  I totally get this concern, and I think their obversation may be right in many cases.  I’m still left, though, with a question: where do gifts fit into our world if payment always takes precedence?

Whilst I value the gift, I’ve no way of determining whether it will be fruitful in the person I give it to.  To gift is to take a risk.  At least payment appears to assuage the risk.

As I’m reflecting on this, I find myself coming back to humility, gratitude, and faithfulness as means of preparing the soil for the gift to grow and be fruitful in.

A vital gift is a preemptive strike towards more giftedness in the world.

Not to provoke a gift in return, but the hope of a new gift – something which can only be grown inside a unique life, and the. gifted on to others.

Like the vital signs of life, a vital gift has its own telling marks: courage, generosity, and wisdom lived out towards others.

I still have to figure out how I pay for my bread and milk, but I can’t get away from this question about vital gifts.

Gifts ask questions.

(*Meister Eckhart – 1260-1328, quoted in Lewis Hyde’s The Gift.)

More than the sum of all our parts – our values, passions, skills, and experiences – each of us has received a gift to pass on.  I’m still groping for where this comes from and the language to explain, but I see in so many people the possibility of bringing a gift into the world only they can bring.

Our lives appear to have the capacity to form these gifts, even while we are pursuing our curiosities, learnings, and practising into forming skills.  As linguist Susan Smith ‘explains that voice is the “ultimate site of intersection and negotiation between the body and language,”* so our gift, like a voice, forms where these curiosities, learnings and doings meet, between character and personality, but is different to them.

To be aware that such a gift exists in everyone is only a beginning.  We must grow up to it if we’re to give it to others: ‘the person labours to become sufficiently empowered to hold and to give the gift’.**

Mindfulness is about being present.   To be aware of what we normally miss.  We must become present to the gift.

Growing up to the gift will take us into unfamiliar or liminal spaces, beyond and between the familiar ones.  We’ll not only hone skills, bringing these together into talents and developing them into strengths, but we’ll also grow our characters, facing our failures and learning to embrace our past and our future.

If this sounds more like a mythical journey than your life, this is exactly it.  Myths are explorations of what it is to be be fully Human.

Daniel Kahneman^ warns, though, that in our way lie substitution and WYSIATI (What You See Is All There Is).  We quickly find an answer, not realising that we have substituted an easier question for the more difficult original one, whilst our past experiences determine our anticipations of the future.

I hear it many times, the whisper of a hope for something more in life.  But it must come easy-ish and fit into an already overfull life: How can I be less rushed? is an easier question to face than, How can I become a person worthy of my gift?

(*Linguist Susan Smith, quoted in Charlotte Bosseaux’s Dubbing, Film and Performance.)
(**From Lewis Hyde’s The Gift.)
(^See Danile Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow.)

*

“Labour and rest, work and ease,
the busy hand, and then the skilled thought:
this blending of opposites
is the secret
of the joy of living.”**

I cannot design the gift.  Somehow it comes to me from beyond.  It’s nature is non-obvious.

I may have been curious about this, learned about that, developed this skill, brought them all together as talents – these are things which are obvious to me, in that I’m conscious of choosing and pursuing them.  But they are not the gift.

The gift comes to me – I can only be open to embrace what has found me.  Any pride or greed on my part blocks the gift;  I am only able to embrace it through humility and gratitude.

‘I would like to speak of gratitude as a labour undertaken by the soul to effect the transformation after a gift has been received.  Between the time a gift comes to us and the time we pass it along, we suffer gratitude.’^

Now it changes me, and I must change because only a bigger me will be able to actualise the gift, to pass the gift on.

Your gift is non-obvious.  This is because it is unique, more than the sum of your parts.  My call, as a dreamwhisperer is the joy of listening for your gift.

(*You can get a high resolution copy of today’s cartoon to colour in yourself.  Just send a request to gb@geoffreybaines.com.)
(**From Alistair Maclean’s Hebridean Altars.)
(^From Lewis Hyde’s The Gift.)