Maybe your life will work. Most likely it won’t at first, but that will give you poetry.*
Yrsa Daley-Ward

Occasionally, even today, you come across certain people who seem to possess an important inner cohesion. They are not leading fragmented, scattershot lives. They have achieved inner integration. They are calm, settled and rooted. They are not blown off course by storms. They don’t crumble in adversity. Their minds are consistent and their hearts are dependable. Their virtues are not the blooming virtues you see in smart college students; they are the ripening virtues you see in people who have lived life a little and have learned from joy and pain.**
David Brooks

Thank you that this life is not
nature-only, but also
nurture;
Thank you that we have
a becoming, as well as a being,
For endlessness, the infinite
found in the present;
Thank you for our capacity to befriend
our pain and grow.

Katherine Morgan Schafler’s The Perfectionist’s Guide to Losing Control;
David Brooks’ The Road to Character.

The true master, when his or her prestige is threatened by age or circumstances, can say, “Don’t you see that I am a person who could be utterly forgotten without batting an eye?”*
Arthur Brooks

If we look at God … we do not see another being out there existing independently of us, we see ourselves being seen.**
James Carse

What a wondrous thing it will be,
If you are seen making the contribution that you must^ –
Beyond your role or definition:
To be the person you can be,
Doing the thing that only you can,
For those who need to receive your gift most of all –
You will never be an imposter.

And if you see people for who they are,
Delighting in the gift only they can bring,
For those they believe their gift is for –
This is part of your oblation.

Who will you see today?

*Arthur Brooks’ From Strength to Strength;
**James Carse’s Breakfast at the Victory;
^See Elle Luna’s The Crossroads of Should and Must.

I think there is something we intuitively understand – that as we mature we should seek spiritual growth in anticipation of an old age filled with enlightenment.*
Arthur Brooks

Our lives are lived in seasons of more, seasons of less, seasons of triumph, seasons of loss. Each season sees our needs change. We live, learn, and adapt. So, too, must our definition of meaning.**
Ryder Carroll

To intentionally live towards an old age
filled with wisdom,
To respectfully and attentively live within
the seasons of life, and in these to
find our meaning for life,
To so live not for ourselves but for others,
To learn from the wasted years, so that
we might enter the present moment more
energised and useful,
To find our meaning and joy
within the struggle –
All of this is doable.

*Arthur Brooks’ From Strength to Strength;
**Ryder Carroll’s The Bullet Journal Method.

What exists in the universe outside you also exists in the universe within you. The universe literally flows through you … The universe has one intention: to create life.*
Erwin McManus

May you experience each day as a sacred gift woven around the
heart of wonder.**
John O’Donohue

Here we are! –
What a marvellousl thing this is;
I open my eyes to a new day –
The wonder floods in again,
Or at least it sometimes does if
I can get my head and heart around it,
Rather than the dull day, the aching body, and
the return of yesterday’s issues.

Here is a cosmological yet mystical understanding
of human life, an expression of the universe that makes stars and
humans out of the same materials –
We have our scientific understanding, and yet wonder,
“How do we happen?”

And what shall we do with this life?

If you think you have room to grow, you do and you will. If you think you’re as good as you can be … you’re right. You won’t get any better.^

We find ourselves in an infinite game^^
in which we have more choice than we know,
The universe offering us the possibility of increase –
I’m not thinking about what we possess, but who we are and
what we can make (and give);
Firstly, the universe gifts us life, and then
it throws all kinds of problems at us,*^ and yet this is exactly where
humans have shown themselves to be imaginative and alchemistic.

The creative process is not a part of one’s life but life itself and all that it throws at you. ^*

Here we are: the gift;
Then come the problems: our purpose.

*Erwin McManus’ The Way of the Warrior;
**John O’Donohue’s Benedictus: For Presence;
^Ryan Holiday’s Discipline is Destiny;
^^See James Carse’s Finite and Infinite Games;
*^We understand the universe is indifferent to us;
^*Nick Cave, from Nick Cave and Séan O’Hagan’s Faith, Hope and Carnage.

Being of a reasonable sort appears to require limitation. Perhaps that is because Being requires Becoming, as well as mere static existence – and to become is to become something more, or at least something different.*
Jordan Peterson

Life is not anything; it is only the opportunity for something.**
Christian Friedrich Hebbel

I am not only what I am, but
also what I will be –
At least this is the possibility open to us all;
I am open and I learn, but
more importantly –
I do, which moves me from anything to
something – which I recognise is
not an easy place to be, because we are returned to
the beginning.

We need to rehearse some different skills. We don’t to be good at them at first but we’ll get better.^

You and me,
We recognise our limitations as an invitation
to becoming, so we keep doing, keep changing, keep becoming:
We will be what we will be.

*Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules For Life;
**Viktor Frankl’s The Doctor and the Soul;
^Gabe Anderson’s blog: Rehearsing New Skills.

The function of ritual, as I understand it, is to give form to human life, not in the way of a more surface arrangement, but in depth.*
Joseph Campbell

Awake to the story of being here and enter
the quiet
immensity of your own presence …
Respond to the call of your gift and
the courage to follow its path.**
John O’Donohue

Our worldviews and rituals look a lot like religion,
Full of beliefs and practises that cover all elements
of our lives,
Most of all, making it possible to be present to
our own immensity – that which resonates from the core of our being, what
Joseph Campbell named our bliss, whilst we are also
present to the immensity of all that is beyond us and around us;
We don’t find religion,
We make it.

*Joseph Campbell’s Myths to Live By;
**John O’Donohue’s Benedictus: For Presence.

To find our ‘life paths,” we’ve got to first accept a few myths about life paths: 1. A life path isn’t a get-out-of-suffering-free card. 2. Just because you choose a life path, it doesn’t mean you’re locked into that for a day longer than you want to be. 3. Not choosing a life path is choosing a life path – but it’s not a great one.*
Campbell Walker

*Campbell Walker’s Your Head is a Houseboat.

In a significant organisation … each person is a vital component, adding human insight, care, and commitment to the work at hand. In this environment, there is no room for someone who is simply compliant.*
Seth Godin

You can carve out a very good career simply by being the most reliable person on the team. You would not think that always showing up on time, hitting every deadline, and responding quickly and professionally to all communication would be such a differentiator, but these traits are always in short supply.**
James Clear

We should take both our finite
and infinite games^ seriously,
And playfully:
To respect the game we’re in with our full attention, but
also to look for ways of bringing something from the best of ourselves,
Something that will be different to the best of others.

*Seth Godin’s The Song of Significance;
**James Clear’s 3-2-1 newsletter: On self-worth, how to have style, and how to build a great career;
^James Clear’s Finite and Infinite Games.

May you come to accept your longing as divine urgency.*
John O’Donohue

Some give freely, yet grow all the richer; others withhold what is due, and only suffer want.**
Ancient proverb

Each of us carries some urgency deep within us,
Something irreplaceable and unrepeatable that the world needs, but
without our generosity it will never have.

Perhaps it is something that you need to receive firstly,
What it is shaping your purpose, and
setting your path through life.

Take a moment to write it down;
What must you do next? –
Even if it’s the smallest iteration of this longing.

*John O’Donohue’s Benedictus: For Longing;
**Proverbs 11:24

The fact that it takes longer to write things out by hand gives handwriting its cognitive edge.*
Ryder Carroll

Devote the back half of your life to serving others with your wisdom. Get old sharing the things you believe are most important.**
Arthur Brooks

There is no need to panic –
Slow and longer are more than okay,
They are good for us,
Inviting us into an openness – a
superpower in today’s world of
fast, busy and overstimulated:
The hardest state for a
human being is that of
open-endedness.^

There will be times when we have
to play our finite games – and reach our destinations, but
the open-ended person, while knowing this, also
enjoys the ever-journeying of the infinite, the knowing
and never-knowing.

One point of embarkation into slow and long openness is
quietness and solitude:
You may want to gift yourself 4’33”^^ of stillness in which to
listen, and if you find yourself distracted by all that
needs to be done, simply
bring yourself back to listening.

*Ryder Carroll’s The Bullet Journal Method;
**Arthur Brooks’ From Strength to Strength;
^Maria Popova’s The Marginalian blog: The Log from the Sea of Cortez: John Steinbeck’s Forgotten Masterpiece on How to Think and the Art of Seeing the Pattern Beyond the Particular;
^^I often set the timer on my phone to 4’33” and seek to be open to the place I am in by listening; you may also open other senses one by one: touch, smell, and sight.