The fairy godmother replied that true magic is to help each thing become its best and most free self.*
Rebecca Solnit

Love God and love every species as yourself. This is the deep challenge of this moment in time.**
Philip Newell

Near to where I once lived in Edinburgh
stands an eight hundred year old oak wood;
Walking amongst these astonishing witnesses
of time, I found myself in awe and humbled.

It is estimated that there are almost
fifty thousand species of animal and
plant presently threatened by extinction –
Some estimates are in nine figures, including insects.

We don’t have to be religious, philosophical, or
activist to deeply appreciate the home in
which we live and move and have our being,
simply an explorer of our profound humanness.

*Rebecca Solnit’s Cinderella Liberator;
**Philip Newell’s The Great Search.

I think if anyone can catch the content of this new myth, it will have to be those who are awakened to the imaginative life. It will have to be the artists and poets, and certainly the dancers.*
Joseph Campbell

Just like you,
I tell myself a story as
I move through the things
my life contains and brings me to.

Just like you,
because this story both iterates my past and
informs my future, I can properly think of it
as my myth.

Just like you,
If it should leave me with some unrealised
potential or unrequited longing, if it should be
passionless or joyless, then I must reinvent.

Just like you, I should feed and free
my imagination rather than wait for
things “out there” to change,
Though, unlike you, this is different for each of us.

And that’s exciting.

*Jean Houston’s A Mythic Life; Joseph Campbell’s wife Jean Erdman was a dancer and choreographer.

The fairy godmother replied that true magic is to help each thing become its best and most free self.*
Rebecca Solnit

We have become a generation of unstorytellers, which is a reason we’re a generation of malcontents.**
Bruce Feiler

The text don’t do it,
The social media post can’t hack it,
The ancients would tell their stories
around family and villages hearths –
Of course, I’m romanticising the past
somewhat, but if you were asked to
tell your story, where would you begin,
Which challenges would you include,
Deepest pain, greatest joy,
Triumphs, hopes?

Why not try writing it down –
Not in some epic- or saga-like way,
But a few lines each day, as you prepare for
what the day will hold.

We shape ourselves as we write.^

*Rebecca Solnit’s Cinderella Liberator;
**Bruce Feiler’s Life Is In the Transitions;
^Ross MacDonald, from Peter Turchi’s A Muse and A Maze.

A daemon is a calling, obsession, a source of lasting and sometimes manic energy … when you are looking for a vocation, you are looking for a daemon … You are trying to find that tension or problem that arouses great waves of moral, spiritual and relational energy.*
David Brooks

It’s all a conversation
Between night and day
Between mist and clarity
Darkness and light**
Lemn Sissay

There it is:
The problem that stirs all your energies^ –
Now you see it, you cannot
unsee.

Yes, it frustrates you
like crazy, and you fail
more times than makes sense,
But you are more alive than ever.

It’s not perfect, but
this imperfection animates you,
So you are engaged and creative
between this and that.

*David Brooks’ The Second Mountain;
**Lemn Sissay’s let the light pour in;
^What is this for you? If you’ve never written it down, try doing this. What is wanting to emerge or unfold?.

A relationship in which you unquestionably have the upper hand at all times is no relationship at all.*
Oliver Burkeman

Don’t chase success. Instead chase new and interesting ways of solving other people’s problems.**
gapingvoid

Dominance and success at any cost
always comes at a cost for someone.

On the other hand, being a servant of goodness and
rightness makes everyone richer.

The virtue of a person is measured not by his outstanding efforts but by his everyday behaviour.^

*Oliver Burkeman’s Meditations for Mortals;
**gapingvoid’s blog: Take something ordinary and elevate it;
^Blaise Pascal, from Ryan Holiday’s Right Thing, Right Now.

How you work with your brain – give it nourishment, ideas, therapy, along with spiritual, mental, and emotional practices and input – radically influences what your brain can and will do.*
Jean Houston

This is a human search. Being there when someone is looking for you. The first step is being the sort of resource that people care enough about to look for. And the second is being findable.**
Seth Godin

Today is another opportunity
to become the person someone else needs to
find, so
we prepare for this –
Not only in the skills that we possess but also
the person we are – and
then we stand out in the open so
that we may be found by the many
or the one.

*Jean Houston’s The Wizard of Us;
**Seth Godin’s blog: Spines out.

Writing in your journal is more powerful than simple meditation for the same reason that writing down your goals is more powerful than leaving them in your head.*
Ben Hardy

Do not become fixated on your premise. We rarely know where we’re going.**
Robert McKee

One thing that writing does for
our thoughts and feelings is
to bring the journey into focus –
And things can change on the way,
Especially us.

*Ben Hardy’s Willpower Doesn’t Work;
**Robert McKee‘s newsletter: Discovering Your Meaning.

There’s only one age: alive.*
Agnes Varda

… there’s plenty of life in you yet –
Indeed, if you believe it,
the greatest adventures are ahead of you.

And if you are at the other end of
this age equation, know that you have plenty of wisdom already,
And we need to see through your eyes.

*Austin Kleon’s blog: A Quote a Day.

The truth that many people never understand is that the more you try to avoid suffering, the more you suffer, because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you, in proportion to your fear of being hurt.*
Thomas Merton

He acknowledged me when I most needed it. I was empowered in the midst of personal erosion, and my life has been very different for it. I swore to myself then that whenever I came across someone “going under” or in the throes of disacknowledgement, I would try to reach and acknowledge that person as I had been acknowledged.**
Jean Houston

It is likely that what we hope for lies
on the other side of suffering –
The thing we most want to avoid becomes
the means for growth and momentum.

The ancients knew this and
wrote it into their myths,
Now recognised in the hero’s journey as
the ordeal or abyss or death and rebirth.

Every human suffers, but
those who have passed and transformed through suffering^
become our listeners and guides, and
we can be counted among them.

*Oliver Burkeman’s The Antidote;
**Jean Houston’s The Possible Human;
^Here are two responses you may want to try: 1. write about the suffering in the second or third person – sense the distance this begins to create; 2. imagine where you sense you carry the suffering inside you, noticing its shape, colour, texture, and listen for what it is trying to say – perhaps write these things down using the first response.

Act with zest on day at a time, and never mind the rest.*
Horace

This organic emergence of rituals is seemingly a product of the brain’s remarkable ability to monitor whether we are achieving our desired goals … .**
Ethan Kross

To bring all of our energy into a day is
a wonderful thing: to invest our
heart and soul and mind and strength
in something meaningful and life-giving
for ourselves and others is wisdom’s way.

To aid this, we create our rituals so that
we don’t get lost; and knowing that we organically produce these,
To distract ourselves or keep moving,
Means that we can harness this power to create our
smarter rituals enabling us to be zesty people.

Why not take a moment to think through,
Or better, write down, your own rituals,
looking for places to shape them for more zestiness?

*Oliver Burkeman’s Meditations for Mortals;
**Ethan Kross’ Chatter.