I am a visible original
A pinnacle of miracle
Critical untypical and
All but inexplicable*
Lemn Sissay

You can discover overlooked value by measuring things that are difficult to measure.**
Seth Godin

How do you measure a miracle, the
untypical, or the
inexplicable?

Begin by identifying your
talents, then follow up with your energies – the things
you are passionate about, topping these off with
your values – the beliefs that
cannot be torn from you;
Discovery can then be followed by invention
As we choose what next:
Our lives are a process of
constant discovery and invention.
Each of us lives
a unique human life.^

*Lemn Sissay’s let the light pour in;
**Seth Godin’s blog: The easy measurement;
^Bill Sharpe’s Three Horizons.

I devote a significant amount of my time thinking about and agonising about something that may well not exist. So, in a way, it may actually be the doubt, the uncertainty and the mystery that animates the whole thing … there is a kind of gentle scepticism that makes belief stronger rather than weaker. In fact, it can be the forge on which more robust belief can be hammered out.*
Nick Cave

Dan Ariely explores the decline of trust and the rise of misbelief
in his latest book,
Whereas the philosophical principles of Occam’s Razor states that
when it comes to there being a number of explanations for something,
The one with the fewest elements or assumptions is
usually correct.

However, now it seems that the opposite of this informs us –
Just search “Kate’s photo” and see what happens,
Never mind 9/11, JFK, Princess Diana, Covid, the 2020 U.S. presidential election, or
your favourite conspiracy theory.

I value doubt and scepticism as they can lead to
important questions that, ultimately, can bring us to a
better understanding and place, but Ariely highlights four groups or elements
that it’s helpful to know are at play when it comes to doubting, there’s:
An emotional response – emotions precede beliefs, but emotions can mislead us,
A cognitive response – but we can be irrational if confirmation bias kicks in,
Our personality’s disposition – meaning we can be more or less prone to misbelief, and,
The social forces – the dangers of surrounding ourselves with people who think the same.**

All this said,
Please have doubts and raise questions.

*Nick Cave and Séan O’Hagan’s Faith, Hope and Carnage;
**Dan Ariely’s Misbelief, written partly as his response to discovering he’d been implicated in a conspiracy theory.

To be prepared against surprise is to be trained. To be prepared for surprise is to be educated.*
James Carse

We have unlearned the patience and attention of lingering at the thresholds where the unknown awaits us.**
John O’Donohue

Lingering, attention, and
patience are necessary for surprise;
Consider their opposites, all possible ways
to train against surprise:
Hurry, distraction, disinclination –
These should do it.

However, as people who linger and
pay attention and
are patient, we are
able to let go and let come –
I-in-Now people, able to bring
curiosity and
interest and
learning and
playfulness and
imagination and
creativity and
making to our discoveries;
We may even become a
surprise to others.

*James Carse’s Finite and Infinite Games;
**John O’Donohue’s Divine Beauty.

Every single moment contains thousands of possibilities – and I can only choose one of them to actualise it … everything I realise through them, or “bring into the world,” … I save into reality and thus protect from transience.*
Viktor Frankl

By being what only I can be, I give humanity what only I can give. It is my uniqueness that allows me to contribute something unique to the universal heritage of humankind.**
Jonathan Sacks

Pluck the moment –
Everything can change in a moment,
For you, or through you
for an other;
Noticing the possibilities in a moment isn’t
some magical power –
Although it can seem so –
Rather, it is an ability we can all develop
through practise.

Here are Jonathan Sacks words again,
Slightly altered:
By being what only you can be,
you give humanity what only you can give.
It is your uniqueness that allows you
to contribute something unique to the universal heritage
of humankind.

*Viktor Frankl’s Yes to Life;
**Krista Tippett’s Becoming Wise.

If you’re simply following [shortcuts] you probably won’t get anywhere interesting. It’s the detours that pay off.*
Seth Godin

On the other path [before Hercules] stood a sterner goddess in a pure white robe. She made a quieter call. She promised no rewards except those that came as a result of hard work. It would be a long journey, she said. There would be sacrifice. There would be scary moments. But it was a journey fit for a god. It would make him the person his ancestors meant him to be.**
Ryan Holiday

After arising and before the work begins,
I take a detour,
I have for many years now,
Into a journal and reading and doodling and
discovery and wonder and,
I hope,
A little personal development
along the way.

And some detours can last a lifetime:
And, some detours can turn into a lifetime.

Seth Godin’s blog: Actual shortcuts often appear to be detours;
Ryan Holiday’s Discipline is Destiny.

We are a limited amount of time. That is how completely our limited time defines us.*
Oliver Burkeman

Man and society are resurrected every moment in the act of hope and faith in the here and now; every act of love, of awareness, of compassion is resurrection; every act of sloth, of greed, of selfishness is death.**
Erich Fromm

Moments of faith and love are
the best of all for
bringing time back to life –
That is, for
bringing us back to life;
Through serving others,
We are learning to live to the
fullness of our being and our becoming –
Perhaps even resurrected to some higher state:
It is a constant effort and hard work –
and inexplicably life-affirming –
to honour who you are, what you believe,
and why you are here.^

*Oliver Burkeman’s Four Thousand Weeks;
**Erich Fromm’s The Revolution of Hope;
^Elle Luna’s The Crossroads of Should and Must.

More often than not, we find ourselves in situations where we don’t know. That’s a given … Acknowledging it is a sign of confidence and awareness.*
Seth Godin

First, pay close, foolish, even absurd attention to things. Then allow their structure, form, and nature to set the limits for the experiences you derive from them. By refusing to ask what could be different, and instead allowing what is present to guide us, we create new space.**
Ian Bogost

To not know is to know more,
Both about oneself and about the situation;
Now we can find out more,
And we may grow in the process –
Instead of trying to fit this thing, this person, this circumstance
into our present understanding,
We allow the unknown to be our teacher, creating
new spaces and possibilities.

The accusation is that this will take too long, and
we continue to hurry three steps forward and hobble two steps back,
Or worse,
But not knowing is a skill to develop, and
the more we use our ability, the
faster it will be, and
the more alive and human we shall be:
Only because
we do not know everything and
because we cannot control the future is it possible
to live and be human.^

It doesn’t matter whether we consider ourselves “secular” or “religious”: in some way we’re all reaching for the heavens.^^

*Seth Godin’s blog: “I don’t know”;
**Ian Bogost’s Play Anything;
^Iona Heath, from Bill Sharpe’s Three Horizons;
^^Susan Cain’s Bittersweet.

The revolutionary force in this century is the awakening of a deep generative human capacity – the I-in-now.*
Otto Scharmer

But what I was trying to say is that we may ultimately find that, to our surprise, our creative endeavours are not the defining element of our lives. They are perhaps a means to an end. That’s what I’m trying to find out.**
Nick Cave

The other capacities are
I-in-me – when I am at the centre of my own world and views,
I-in-you – when I step out of my story and step into your story in order to serve,
I-in-us – when we serve each other, and the greater world:
If you have come here to help me,
you are wasting your time.
But if you have come because your liberation
is bound up with mine,
then let us work together.^

I-in-now – together we serve what is wanting to emerge,
The future that is wanting to come into being;
In such a place as this,
None of us are the final product,
We are all becoming,
And in the end,
This “I” may be our most beautiful achievement.

*Otto Scharmer’s Theory U;
**Nick Cave and Seán O’Hagan’s Faith, Hope and Carnage;
^Lilla Watson, from Rohit Bharhava and Jennifer Brown’s Beyond Diversity.

And when playing a game, the question is not how to overcome that structure, but how to subject oneself to it … the play is in the thing not in us.*
Ian Bogost

The hunger will give you everything. And it will take from you everything. It will cost you your life and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it. But knowing this, of course, is what sets you free.**
Hugh Macleod

Actually, you did sign up for this,
It’s the tough reality that follows the
inciting imagination;
Your desire to pursue your must requires deep immersion,
When we want to hold back, we must lean in
with our skills, knowledge, and heart –
Counterintuitively, this forward, galloping tilt is what brings us
freedom, as Dan Ariely personally testifies:
My dark sense of helplessness receded a little.
In its place,
like a glimmer of light,
was an old friend: curiosity. After all,
I’m a social scientist.^

There will be more to learn, more enabling along the way,
But first of all you must trust what brought you here:
If it’s your truth,
you can’t not do it, and
that knowledge
carries you through.^^

*Ian Bogost’s Play Anything;
**Hugh Macleod’s Evil Plans;
^Dan Ariely’s Misbelief;
^^Parker Palmer, from Krista Tippett’s Becoming Wise.

sui géneris (a) a class alone, unique, peculiar

If you keep telling people who they are, who their best selves are, if you keep reminding them of their true identity, there’s a good chance they’ll figure out what to do.*
Rob Bell

You get to decide your uniqueness,
Beyond,
More than,
Biology, sociology and psychology:
Thus Karl Jaspers calls the being of man a
‘deciding’ being,
not something that simply ‘is’ but something
that first decides ‘what it is.’**

We are discerning this today
more comprehensively than ever, but, perhaps,
There is more understanding to come, helping us to
avoid jumping from one labeled box into another;
And who we are is never to be separated from
what we do, the
unique and peculiar beauty each person
brings into the world.

*Rob Bell’s What is the Bible?;
**Viktor Frankl’s The Doctor and the Soul.