On a quest, the process of transformation is at least as important, maybe more so, than the destination we’re trying to reach.*
Sunil Raheja

“So far” and “not yet” are the foundation of every successful journey.**
Seth Godin

I had thought the destination
was the important thing,
Only for the journey to
endlessly surprise me.

*Sunil Raheja’s Dancing With Wisdom;
**Seth Godin’s The Practice.

Evolution favours species that move their bodies in the way they were meant to move.*
Dacher Keltner

Flow is a symptom of the work we’re doing, not the cause of it.**
Seth Godin

Sunil Raheja offers four signs of
egocentricity:
We compare ourselves with others;
We are defensive;
We need to display our brilliance;
We need to be liked and accepted.^

Our movements become unnatural and
distorted, and whilst we need to develop ego
to become an independent person,
When we become stuck in our individuality,
It’s like dragging a ball and chain.

Interdependence frees us into who we are
uniquely,
To immerse ourselves in what
we must do
and bring to others,
And to value how we
could not do this without each other:
Near the end of March 1845,
I borrowed an axe and went
down to the woods
by Walden Pond …
It is difficult to begin without
borrowing.^^

*Dacher Keltner’s Awe;
**Seth Godin’s The Practice;
^Sunil Raheja’s Dancing With Wisdom;
^^Henry David Thoreau, from Lewis Hyde’s Common As Air.

That’s what humans do: We make and remake our stories, abandoning the ones that no longer fit and trying on new ones for size.*
Katherine May

As our circumstances change, we need to tell our stories differently in order to bring out their timeless truth.**
Karen Armstrong

This adapting, unfolding, growing nature
of story is really
important for me to embrace right now:
I am newly retired,
I have moved my home two hundred miles,
Yet there is something I must do –
My timeless truth – and
I must do all I can to keep sight of this,
So I keep coming to this quiet place
each morning to
reimagine:
I thought of the old Latin root of the word desire,
meaning de sider, 
of the stars. 
To have a desire in your life literally means
to keep your star in sight,
to follow a glimmer,
a beacon,
a disappearing will-o’-the-wisp
over the horizon into someplace you cannot yet
fully imagine.^

*Katherine May’s Wintering;
**Karen Armstrong’s A Short History of Myth;
^David White’s Crossing the Unknown Sea.

The whole idea is that you’ve got to bring out again that which you went to recover, the unrealised, unutilised potential in yourself.*
Joseph Campbell

I thought of the old Latin root of the word desire, meaning de sider, of the stars. To have a desire in your life literally means to keep your star in sight, to follow a glimmer, a beacon, a disappearing will-o’-the-wisp over the horizon into someplace you cannot yet fully imagine.**
David Whyte

The thing about potential is
we won’t know what it really is –
It begins with a desire, but then we must
set out to release it, to
realise it,
And much can change on the journey:
How vain it is to sit down to
write when you have not stood up
to live.
Methinks that the moment my
legs begin to move,
my thoughts begin to
flow.^

Potential takes us on a wilder journey
of mythological proportions
towards that unimaginable someplace.

*Joseph Campbell’s The Hero’s Journey;
**David Whyte’s Crossing the Unknown Sea;
^Henry David Thoreau, from Annie Murphy Paul’s The Extended Mind.

Art is what we call it when we are able to create something new that changes someone.*
Seth Godin

Our society does not teach us how to be an effective giver of gifts. The schools don’t emphasise it. The popular culture its confused by it.**
David Brooks

The possibility of beginning again –
Just sounds too good to be true –
Yet beginnings are the gift I long to bring –
It’s the receiving that is the hardest thing.

*Seth Godin’s The Practice;
**David Brooks’ The Second Mountain.

Puhpowee, she explained, translates as “the force which forces mushrooms to push up from the earth overnight.*
Robin Wall Kimmerer

Not for mushrooms, but
there’s a kind of puhpowee force
that drives each of us to bring an
elegant solution into the world
to meet some problem that has
caught our attention;
How would you describe yours?

*Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass.

One study found that people who were directed to doodle while carrying out a boring listening task remembered 29 percent more information than people who did not doodle, likely because the latter group had let their attention slip away entirely.*
Annie Murphy Paul

The point isn’t to listen to boring stuff –
Though everything becomes more accessible
with doodling –
The point is, doodling allows us to be
more present and open.

*Annie Murphy Paul’s The Extended Mind.

Julia Cameron’s morning pages help unlock something inside. Not the use or a magical mystical power, but simply the truth of your chosen identity. If you do something creative each day, you’re now a creative person. Not a blocked person, a striving person, not an untalented person. A creative person.*
Seth Godin

It may be the help provided to
the person on the helpline, or
the solution to the
rewiring conundrum, or
the support imagined
for a co-worker, or
the form of words that will most
engage the listener, or
the elegant solution to the
insurmountable problem, or …
Or …
However you are creative –
And you are –
Journaling will likely
make it bigger and
take it further.

*Seth Godin’s The Practice.

When you get past making labels for things, it is possible to combine and transform elements in to new things. Look at things until their import, identity, name, use, and description have dissolved.*
Corita Kent

Yes, we can copy the
externalities of something,
And that may be useful for
a moment,
Or,
We can copy
the parts, elements, layers,
Depths and mysteries of what makes this
this,
And that is quite another thing,
Full of iteration and innovation.

*Corita Kent and Jan Steward’s Learning By Heart.

Open sails
And stretch my spine
The night’s gone
The day’s mine*
Lemn Sissay

*Lemn Sissay’s let the light pour in.