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.

to this day

Beautiful...

human flourishing

“The separation between science and human values is an illusion – and, actually, quite a dangerous one at this point in human history.”  Sam Harris

the more beautiful world that our hearts tell us is possible

I was at a meeting on Friday that got me thinking... can you create community in a monetised system... say, like an independent school? What does it mean when the student is looked at as a widget, a 'butt' in a seat... what does it mean when a school is treated like an airline: fill the seats with anyone willing to pay...

How do you create a different way to do things?

How do you inspire others to ask better questions?

These questions led me to Charles Eisenstein...

“We’ve all been given a gift, the gift of life.  What we do with our lives is our gift back.”

~ Edo

What do you live in service to ... a montetised system, a connected community, or something else entirely?

occupylove.org

GMO OMG

THE PEACE OF WILD THINGS

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. 

I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. 

For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

— Wendell Berry

Check out the GMO OMG web site and their kickstarter campaign.

married to amazement

When Death Comes

 

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

 

to buy me, and snaps his purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox;

 

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

 

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering;
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

 

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

 

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

 

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth
tending as all music does, toward silence,

 

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

 

When it's over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was a bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

 

When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened
or full of argument.

 

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.

 

~ Mary Oliver ~

go home

“Your living is determined not so much by what life brings to you as by the attitude you bring to life; not so much by what happens to you as by the way your mind looks at what happens.”  ~ Khalil Gibran

When adversity strikes, I have a tendency to become cynical... some might even say bitter. That's my initial reaction, taken with a bit of humor.

But bitter is not a good place to land; it's more of a trap than a solution. At some point, I eventually acknowledge the reality of where I am and determine what I need to learn or know or change to make things feel better.

When I find myself in this place, I need to take my own advice:

Take inspired action toward the life you want. Patience and positivity will help. Remove negative influences from your life. Surround yourself with that which helps you focus on the positive: take a hike, meditate, read a book, have coffee with an inspiring friend.

Our thoughts are powerful. Don't let them lead you into a trap. Take inspired action.

change your thoughts --> change your feelings --> change your actions

pep talk

"Not cool, Robert Frost!"

57th Inauguration

One Today

One sun rose on us today, kindled over our shores, peeking over the Smokies, greeting the faces of the Great Lakes, spreading a simple truth across the Great Plains, then charging across the Rockies. 

One light, waking up rooftops, under each one, a story told by our silent gestures moving behind windows.

My face, your face, millions of faces in morning’s mirrors, each one yawning to life, crescendoing into our day: pencil-yellow school buses, the rhythm of traffic lights, fruit stands: apples, limes, and oranges arrayed like rainbows begging our praise. 

Silver trucks heavy with oil or paper— bricks or milk, teeming over highways alongside us, on our way to clean tables, read ledgers, or save lives— to teach geometry, or ring-up groceries as my mother did for twenty years, so I could write this poem.

All of us as vital as the one light we move through, the same light on blackboards with lessons for the day: equations to solve, history to question, or atoms imagined, the “I have a dream” we keep dreaming, or the impossible vocabulary of sorrow that won’t explain the empty desks of twenty children marked absent today, and forever. 

Many prayers, but one light breathing color into stained glass windows, life into the faces of bronze statues, warmth onto the steps of our museums and park benches as mothers watch children slide into the day.

One ground. 

Our ground, rooting us to every stalk of corn, every head of wheat sown by sweat and hands, hands gleaning coal or planting windmills in deserts and hilltops that keep us warm, hands digging trenches, routing pipes and cables, hands as worn as my father’s cutting sugarcane so my brother and I could have books and shoes.

The dust of farms and deserts, cities and plains mingled by one wind—our breath.

Breathe.

Hear it through the day’s gorgeous din of honking cabs, buses launching down avenues, the symphony of footsteps, guitars, and screeching subways, the unexpected song bird on your clothes line.

Hear: squeaky playground swings, trains whistling, or whispers across café tables, Hear: the doors we open for each other all day, saying: hello - shalom - buon giorno - howdy - namaste - or buenos días in the language my mother taught me—in every language spoken into one wind carrying our lives without prejudice, as these words break from my lips.

One sky: since the Appalachians and Sierras claimed their majesty, and the Mississippi and Colorado worked their way to the sea. 

Thank the work of our hands: weaving steel into bridges, finishing one more report for the boss on time, stitching another wound or uniform, the first brush stroke on a portrait, or the last floor on the Freedom Tower jutting into a sky that yields to our resilience.

One sky, toward which we sometimes lift our eyes tired from work: some days guessing at the weather of our lives, some days giving thanks for a love that loves you back, sometimes praising a mother who knew how to give, or forgiving a father who couldn’t give what you wanted.

We head home: through the gloss of rain or weight of snow, or the plum blush of dusk, but always—home, always under one sky, our sky. 

And always one moon like a silent drum tapping on every rooftop and every window, of one country—all of us—facing the stars hope—a new constellation waiting for us to map it, waiting for us to name it—together