A Life of Wonder

Every once in a while I’ll find a short story that resonates with me to my core. I use these short stories, I call them “Stories that Shine” as ways to bring people together. They are all beautiful written, but they aren’t complicated. They’re accessible to anyone with life experience. They’re more written for people who pay attention than for people who read literature.

About a week ago, I listened to the author Russell Banks read his short story “The Moor.” I first heard it on This American Life. And It’s one of these special stories. It starts simple enough, and I’m not going to give it away to you.

Suffice to say, the story is about people who remember each others’ essence–and a chance encounter that brings that essence to life. I hope you’ll read or watch this very special work. The story begins about 7 minutes in and you’ll find it here.

I’m exploring the relationship between two abilities: making careful plans that anticipate future events and enhancing the ability to stay present and respond with flexibility, resilience, and mindfulness to challenges that arise. Finding the right balance between these two approaches is my goal. I’ve found this as applicable both in personal life and in business.

How do you strike your balance?

Best work and daily work are vastly different but both have significance. Writing every day, for example, is a habit that reveals patterns through rereading that might not show up in your “best” work. Best work can be either a sudden flash of creativity or a carefully cultivated and polished product, but it may sometimes lack the authenticity found in daily work.

I now have a different appreciation for best work and daily work – the former is a soothing routine that offers gradual insight, while the latter is an act of creation and concentration.

Tonight I’m wondering about goals. I’ve always set goals with my work and with business, but I seldom have set “healing or health goals.” I wonder if goals were for things like: increasing self-compassion, or accept the present without judgement?

Are these mindsets to see and understand, or goals that can be realized?

What happens, then, if one of the goals is “non-striving?”

How might one pursue a goal like this: with insights and reflection, with deliberate action?

“When a loved one dies, you experience your life in just two days: today, when they are no longer here, and yesterday, the immense, vast yesterday, when they were here. And so my life as I see it now is demarcated by one line, the yesterday, when my mother was with me, and now, when she is not.”
– Ocean Vuong

in memory of a dear friend.

As builders of community, remember to take time to rest and be nurtured by the relationships, ideas, and people within the community we have created. Cultivating a community is a continuous effort and joy, but we must also allow ourselves to be held and nurtured by it.

I collect questions. You probably know that about me. Good questions are like rare stamps, coins, trading cards. They’re as rich as metaphors, and as helpful as coaches or therapists. I spend most of my time thinking about these questions and looking for fresh ones that shed new light on situations. I came across this question which I enjoy: If your mind took instructions from you, would you create anxiety? Video link.

I bought an old book: leather bound from 1908. The last page offered a prayer of sorts.

“Give me solitude, sweet solitude, but in my solitude leave one to whom I may whisper: ‘Solitude is sweet.”

Healing & mindfulness work in that way for me. I enjoy the process of clearing the mind, of introspection, of analysis (and the opposite) and letting go. And I greatly appreciate the act of sharing what I realized and cultivating insight from it. I wonder if there’s a more mindful way to share, one that uses less words and more shared experiences?

Where do you save things you don’t want to forget, things you want to come back or share?

I know many executives that have a system for labeling everything.

The have a naming protocol: all their files are perfectly organized, and the desktops of their computers are tidy.

Then there are others with wild piles of papers on their desks. They too have organizational systems which are impenetrable to outsiders, and yet perfectly logically to them.

I’ve tried every to-do list and software imaginable. My latest habit is to take screenshots on my phone of cool things I want to return to. Every week, as if a ritual, I come back to them. Here’s this week’s batch:

Young Dali

Nature’s waterfall woman

Tik Tok Philosophy

A quote to live by

Things normalize.

When the pressures of the day, the shock, the fear, the joy, the surprise, the insights fade, what remains normalizes.

And in so doing, becomes beautiful again.