We live in a moving universe – continually expanding towards we know not what.

Within such a universe, nothing remains the same and equilibrium can become a dangerous thing, such as believing this is it – especially in the stories we create to make sense of sentient life.  Even things intended for good can become harmful if they are not allowed to move forward.

Lewis Hyde tells of the origins of potluck (potlatch) ceremonies in native American culture when goods would be consumed: food would be eaten but also tents and goods would be burned – a form of eating.  The Haida people even referred to their potlatch as “killing wealth.”  When something is owned, problems follow.  In this world, a gift is meant to keep moving; when someone keeps it as their own they’ve done something wrong.*

Seth Godin writes about how a gift creates disequilibrium, creating a world of giving over one of having.  Fifty-one per cent giving to forty-nine is enough to begin.

We live in a potlatch universe, inviting us to keep moving, to keep what we have moving, to consume what we need and to see what we can do with the rest.

‘No one is born graceful.  It’s not a gift, it’s a choice.’**

Being graceful is about making our life a gift to others, whether we think they deserve it or not (the universe has graced life to us).  Seth Godin offers this thought.

(*From Lewis Hyde’s The Gift.)
(**From Seth Godin’s Graceful.)

In 1958, Clennon King applied to be a mature student at the University of Mississippi.  A judge committed him to a mental asylum.  The reason?  He was black and had to be insane to think he could enter the university.

The frameworks which inform us this is the way it is for people because of their race, gender, sexuality, colour are, in the words of Yuval Noah Harari “figments of imagination.”*

‘Unjust discrimination often gets worse, not better, with time.  Money comes to money, and poverty to poverty.  Education comes to education, and ignorance to ignorance.  Those who are victimised by history are likely to be victimised yet again.  And those whom history has privileged are more likely to be privileged again.’*

I’d only just come across the statistics showing how a man living in east Glasgow has a life expectancy shorter than a man in Haiti.**  The stories of both these “men” are shaped by something we have made up.

Daniel Kahneman writes of a condition he names frame-bound:

Reframing is effortful and System 2 is normally lazy.  Unless there’s an obvious reason to do otherwise, most of us passively accept decision problems as they are framed and therefore rarely have an opportunity to discover the extent to which our preferences are frame-bound rather than reality-bound.’^

As highly developed cognitive beings, we need stories to live out our (sixty-two or sixty three years of existence in east Glasgow and Haiti) eighty years of existence (soon to be one hundred years?), and we know we can create better ones.

Indeed, this might be the defining characteristic of our age.

(*From Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens.)
(**Here is Katherine Trebeck’s TEDx Glasgow talk.)
(^From Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow.  System 2 is our ability to think about what we are thinking about, but this takes energy.)

Not if I give it to you as a gift.

Unless we’re some kind of Robin Hood, we don’t steal to pass on to others.  We steal to gain some benefit or advantage or edge for ourselves.

Gifts, in the Native American sense, are always gifts – never become capital.  The early settlers of North America just didn’t get this.  They called those who saw a gift as always being a gift, Indian givers.  

It’s a disparaging term we can aspire to.

Each of us has a gift (knack, purpose, art, calling, vocation, element, flow) which isn’t to be kept to ourselves but to be gifted to others.  Indeed, the only way to develop this is in sharing it.  But if I give something to you, I don’t want you to keep it to yourself, I’d love it if you were to pass it on.

What’s your gift?*

(*Sometimes we can make a living from what it is we love to do, but I’m thinking about what

The best things we hope for ourselves, others, and our world won’t just happen.

We have to work for them.

‘And stories are all about conflict.  What lies between a person and what that person wants is work.’*

Hoping good things will happen is an event-led view of the future.

Hoping for things through hard work is a choice-led perspective.

The bad news is, we can only do it with others.

The good news is, we can only do it with others.

Like in the acknowledgements at the end of a book when the author lists all the people who have helped get them to publishing.

So many stories waiting to be written.

(*From Donald Miller’s Scary Close.)

We each bring light into one another’s lives.

We can often see others better than we can see ourselves – something I was reminded of yesterday.

It can be a life-changing thing.  And just as a day is filled with many kinds of light, each with its own kind of beauty, so each person who visits with us brings a different quality of light to us.

‘[A]t times, we accidentally tear a little hole in the fabric of reality so something on the other side shines through, exposing the darkness of our routine existence.’*

The emerging future is a serendipitous thing.

It depends on our noticing and then being willing to risk becoming more what others feel they see in us – capturing these unexpected rays of light and choosing to live accordingly.

None come to us as fully formed ideas and possibilities but, when we synchronise them with our values and skills and longing, a kind of alchemy happens.

One way we can remove risk is by trying out the possibility: little experiments, prototypes, so we can learn quickly, often, and always forward.

(*From Donald Miller’s Scary Close.)

‘I don’t mind the longing.  The longing is beautiful.  I don’t want to feel it alone anymore.’*

What is this longing?

We explore it through special others, through great endeavours, through the latest technology, and still the longing is there.  Some frame the longing in a religious way, others in a philosophical or existential way, others as a mystery.  We only know, it’s there.

‘Curation is the ultimate method of transforming noise into meaning.’**

For curation read story. Story is our way of making sense of everything within which we find the signals relating to longing.

Curation, or storyboarding, is an intense endeavour.

We need time and space for deep observation: ‘isolation stimulates risk taking, encouraging ideas weird and wild and acting as a counterforce to organisational inertia.’^

This is true for the individual and for the tribe: those we share our longing with and in whom we find the longing expressed.’

We know this is not it.  It’s the great story of Humankind which we have taken on from those before us and which we’ll pass on to those who follow.

(*From Donald Miller’s Scary Close.)
(**From Rohit Bhargava’s Non-Obvious.)
(^From Peter Diamandis and Steve Kotler’s Bold.)

Why not?

What if I want to look deeper, not taking things at face value?

The non-obvious smells funny to the obvious:* Skunk Works is a term used to describe a company stepping out of the obvious: ‘whenever a company wanted to go bold, skunk was often the way innovation got done’.**

“I wouldn’t do that,” can be a way for others to try and control, even using fear, guilt, or shame to bring others into line.

The obvious isn’t working, though.  And just beneath the surface there lies the non-obvious.  And we need people who’re willing to see what others don’t.

This will mean different things for different people.  For me, this it’s about bringing out people’s potential.  I’m hunting down the non-obvious.

“It’s better to be a pirate than join the Navy.”^

(*I borrow the term non-obvious from Rohit Bhargava’s Non-Obvious.)
(**From Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler’s Bold.  The original Skunk Works gained it’s name when a crucial plane design team was sited by a stinking plastics works, to put people off nosing around.  The team also used a smelly circus tent as their workspace.)
(^Steve Jobs, quoted in Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler’s Bold.)

Stem-cell pioneer Robert Hariri is one of many investing in lengthening human life:

“Our goal is to help all of us live a longer and healthier life.”*

For me, the missing word from this sentence fulfilling, or maybe meaningful.  Of course, this is the element that’s up to us.

Whatever the average length of a Human life in fifty years time, it’ll most likely be grown in the same way as our lives right now: slowly, over a long period of time.  How attentive we are to growing our lives will effect how meaningful or fulfilling it is, and right now we have the possibility of living out what can be called the adjacent possible.  Options.

Nassim Taleb suggests ‘optionality is a substitute for intelligence’- more comes to those who are open to the adjacent possible.**

“The beautiful truth about the adjacent possible is that its boundaries grow as you explore them.  Each new combination opens up the possibility of new combinations.”^

Some just don’t get this.  Novelist Italo Calvino expresses this when he has his character Marco Polo say to Kublai Khan,

“I speak and speak, but the listener retains only the words he is expecting. … It’s not the voice that commands the story: it’s the ear.”^^

My friend Charlotte has introduced the term mise-en-scène to me.  In terms of film (and theatre) this is everything that fills a frame – lighting, costumes, colour, furniture, distance between viewer and viewed – and how these are organised.

Each of our lives has mise-en-scène – values, experiences, skills, resources, story.  When we notice, the field deepens, the possibilities increase.

‘My sense of identity had shifted, and I was beginning to see myself as part of the unfolding generative order.’^*

(*Robert Hariri, quoted in Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler’s Bold.)
(**From Nassim Taleb’s Antifragile.)
(^Stephen Johnson, quoted in Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler’s Abundance.)
(^^From Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities.)
(*^From Charlotte Bosseaux’s Dubbing, Film, and Performance.)
(^*From the close of Jospeh Jaworski’s Source.)

There is natural fire (first fire).  There is industrial fire (third fire).

In between there is anthropogenic fire (second fire): Human fire – our greatest technology.

Stephen Pyne concludes his fascinating book on fire with these words:

‘Earth remains a fire planet.  How fire appears, what biological role it assumes, what technological work it does – all will depend on how humanity sees itself as a fire creature and fire monopolist, how it understands itself in the great scheme of things … .’*

Pyne is observing the demise of second fire.  I’m a prime example.  I may experience first fire at a distance – lightening hits combustible material and a fire begins.  As I write on my laptop I’m using third fire.  But I don’t know how to make fire, or use it to farm or make something with.

Pyne’s concern for the loss of fire skills is most focused on the renewing of the earth’s flora.  By not fire-scaping, natural fires become megafires – far more destructive.

I want to make a metaphorical leap to what second fires mean for us.  First or natural fires here are the things which happen to us in life – we wait for them to occur, and they may be good or bad.  Industrial fires are those we benefit from as part of the system which is largely invisible to us but upon which we’re dependent.

Second, or anthropogenic, fire is the ability everyone has to be a maker of fire – spark people.

Spark people know their values and capabilities, resources invisible to others are visible to them, and every day they look for ways to employ these.  They know one person can have an effect on the field of the emerging future and, when they find each other, they create storyboards of the future, explorers of the adjacent possible – because there are many possible futures.

As such, they can be transformative people.

‘My idea of the modern Stoic  is someone who transforms fear into prudence, pain into information, mistakes into initiation, and desire into understanding.’**

“You have to break away from the day-to-day, immerse yourself in a new way of thinking about yourself.”^

(*From Stephen Pyne’s Fire.)
(**From Nassim Taleb’s Antifragile.)
(^Businessman Gary Wilson, quote in Joseph Jaworski’s Source.)

Donald Miller got me thinking with his comments about how the industrial revolution disconnected men from the wellbeing of their families, focusing their sense of worth on efficiency and productivity, leaving the more intimate practice of bringing up children to women.*

Things are changing but the memes take a little longer to shake off.

For me, reinforces for me how, when we have a dream, we’re really having five dreams.  Every dream is like an iceberg with four more dreams lying beneath the surface.

Miller had brought a consultant in to help his business grow:

‘Dan said unless I had healthy relationships, I was doomed.’*

Here are the five dreams:**

Work: the art or contribution you must bring into the world (also described as vocation, calling, element, purpose, bliss;

Relationships: we are Human together, so who are the others you need to connect with and the toxics you may need to disconnect with? – it is also about our relationship with the universe;

Finance: the thing which cannot be ignored if you want to pursue your work and care for those who matter most – this connects with your job and maybe your work;

Health: you can’t do any of the above as you want to without pursuing physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual wellbeing;

Spirituality: which can be about god or not, but is always about your higher values and Self out from which you live your life.

You’ll have spotted, none of these are static.

Always changing and changing again, they’re critical to feeling for and being open to the emerging future.  When we’re “five dream-aware” we’re more able to sense everything the future can be and is moving towards us.

(*See Donald Miller’s Scary Close.)
(**You may come up with better ones towards wholeness.)