choose possibility

"If I were to wish for anything I should not wish for wealth and power, but for the passionate sense of what can be,  for the eye, which, ever young and ardent, sees the possible. Pleasure disappoints, possibility never. And what wine is so sparkling, what so fragrant, what so intoxicating as possibility."  - Sōren Kierkegaard

I've posted Benjamin Zander's TED talk before; I loved it. Little did I know, when I picked up the book The Art of Possibility that it was co-authored by the same Benjamin Zander.

I love the "I am a contribution" game. Imagine... inventing yourself as a contribution. The steps to the practice are these:

1. Declare yourself a contribution.
2. Throw yourself into life as someone who makes a difference, accepting that you may not understand how or why.

In the contribution game, unlike success and failure, contribution has no other side.

I loved Rule Number 6 *.

Favorite Quote:

The life force for humankind is, perhaps, nothing more or less than the passionate energy to connect, express, and communicate. Enrollment is that life force at work, lighting sparks from person to person, scattering light in all directions. Sometimes the sparks ignite a blaze; sometimes they pass quietly, magically, almost imperceptibly, from one to another to another.

If you feel like focusing on the possible or if, after watching his TED talk, you'd like to know Benjamin Zander better, I highly recommend reading The Art of Possibility.

"I am done with great things and big plans, great institutions and big successes. I am for those tiny, invisible loving human forces that work from individual to individual, creeping through the crannies of the world like so many rootlets, or like the capillary oozing of water, yet which, if given time, will rend the hardest monuments of human pride."   

-  William James

*Rule Number 6 is "Don't take yourself so g--damn seriously."  What are the other rules, you might wonder? ... there aren't any.