“One way to open your eyes is to ask yourself,
“What if I had never seen this before? What if I knew I would never see it again?”
~ Rachel Carson
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{ FRIDAY PHOTOS offer the lift of beauty }
Related viewing: Friday Photo | Lift
Flickr photo: sometimes the underside of beauty is still beauty, by psyberartist
Related reading: Giving Up Housework, 20 Ways to Make a Decision, Pep Talk | Wing It
Flickr photo: puertas abiertas, by drusbi
“Don’t be afraid to take a big step if one is indicated.
You can’t cross a chasm in two small jumps.”
~ David Lloyd George
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{ FRIDAY PHOTOS offer the lift of beauty ]
Related viewing: Friday Photo | Lift
Flickr photo: (untitled), by dawnzy58
It’s easy to fall into step behind someone else’s vision of success.
The lifting strut of the popular mayor as he chats his way through his kingdom. The long line-up in front of the restaurant where the five-star chef concocts her masterpieces. The buzz. The fame. The crowds. The face on the billboard.
If I’m honest with myself, if I close my eyes and focus on my own vision of success, I see something so different I have to stretch my arms out into empty space to claim it.
I’m not the big-name singer at the front of the stage, belting it out to the waving hands. Or the production company or the agent or even the top-of-the-line guitar. I’m the photograph snapped in the moment a man in the crowd stumbled and a woman passing by dropped her drink to help him. I’m that photo, stared at all night, held in the hands of the woman, 65 years later, the day after the man from the crowd, her husband, died.
I’m not the candy shop or the movie theatre or the big, new mall. I’m the nice lady sitting on a cushion in front of a low table in her overgrown backyard, cutting pictures out of magazines. I’m what a rejected kid from down the street sees as he clears the thicket of bushes at the back of the lot, sits down next to me, and tells me all about it. I lean into his skinny shoulder with my own and hand him a pair of scissors, a magazine, and a chocolate truffle. Or I show him the big wooden box that holds my postcard collection. Mainly, I sit beside him. We sit together. We listen to the birds. That’s all. That’s enough.
I’m not the great, millennial concept that saves humanity from self-destruction. I’m the indentation in an otherwise smooth surface, the dent that fits the pivot point as one person swivels to a new perspective.
I’m a time-release friend. I’m a resting place. I’m the deviance that allows the pivot. Where in the world can I go with these visions of success? I don’t yet know. I only know that I’ll never find out if I start with someone else’s idea of glory.
When you close your eyes, what visions of success do you see?
Related reading: Pep Talk | Grope, Joy Detective, Curious Curators
Flickr photo: Yellow leaved boy, by lepiaf.geo
“And men spend their lives adding and subtracting and dictating letters
when they secretly long to write sonnets and play the violin and burst into tears at the sunset.”
~ Brenda Ueland
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{ FRIDAY PHOTOS offer the lift of beauty }
Flickr photo: Day’s End, by KM Photography
Related viewing: Friday Photo | Snow
Thanks to Andrea for telling me about the article “Caring for Your Introvert,” by Jonathan Rauch, published in March of 2003 in The Atlantic, a major North American magazine whose target audience is “thought leaders” and whose tag line is “Think. Again.”
Rauch is funny and perceptive. His message of empowerment is basically the same as Highly Sensitive Power’s: “sensitive” and “different” are qualities worth being proud of.
The response to Rauch’s article was an avalanche of mail. The article has continued to be one of the most popular articles on The Atlantic‘s website. So popular, in fact, that a few years after the article was published, Sage Stossel interviewed Rauch for The Atlantic in February 2006: “Introverts of the World, Unite!“
“The Introversy Continues” shares reader responses to a question, posed by Rausch: “In looking for a mate, are introverts better off pairing up with extroverts or fellow introverts?”
Our challenge, as introverts, is finding each other. Johathan and Andrea show us how.
“Actually, my favorite line is from Waiting for Godot. I can quote it to you exactly: “Don’t talk to me. Don’t speak to me. Stay with me.”
~ Jonathan Rauch
“If we introverts ran the world, it would no doubt be a calmer, saner, more peaceful sort of place. As [fellow introvert Calvin] Coolidge is supposed to have said, ‘Don’t you know that four fifths of all our troubles in this life would disappear if we would just sit down and keep still?'”
~ Jonathan Rauch
Related reading: The Power of Community — Learning from Geeks and Queers,
Laughing in Our Human Suits
There is a rule in sailing where the more maneuverable
ship should give way to the less maneuverable craft.
I think this is sometimes a good rule to follow in human relationships as well.
~ Joyce Brothers
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{ FRIDAY PHOTOS offer the lift of beauty }
Flickr photo: Exe Estuary Creek, by me’nthedogs’
Related viewing: Friday Photo | Detours
While doing online research for upcoming posts in my 5 Senses series, I came across The Archives of Scientists’ Transcendent Experiences (TASTE).
Created by Charles T. Tart, one of the founders of Transpersonal Psychology, TASTE provides sceintists with a way to give voice to their unusual experiences with the transcendent in a way that preserves their anonymity, if they desire, and collects the data for research purposes.
I’ve always loved the combination of science and art and the places where they find common ground. TASTE seems like such a place. Browsing through its archives relaxes me and makes me think there’s hope for the world, for finding ways to bridge the perceived gaps between science and spirit.
For another hit of science-meets-spirit, and if you’re up for a wild intellectual ride, see Gary Zukov’s book The Dancing Wu Li Masters.
Flickr photo: Spock/Monroe, by laverrue
Related reading: Charles T. Tart’s blog, 5 Senses | Sound | Julian Treasure
“If stories come to you, care for them.
And learn to give them away where they are needed.
Sometimes a person needs a story more than food to stay alive.”
~ Barry Lopez, Arctic Dreams, via Daniel Pink’s A Whole New Mind
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{ FRIDAY PHOTOS offer the lift of beauty }
Flickr photo: Little Venice – Prince Alfred Pub, by ktylerconk
Related viewing: Friday Photo | Lift
“You usually do not try to describe your relationship with your leg, because you understand that your leg is you.”
~ Abraham/Esther Hicks, The Vortex
You may be unsteady on your feet because you’ve lost a part of yourself. Don’t circle the house wondering where you left it or scan your companions for signs of thievery. Ask yourself when you last saw what you’re missing.
Where did you leave the truth?
If you’re hyperventilating with anxiety or blaming someone else for the hard row you’re hoeing, at some point you parted company with a vital bit of yourself. Maybe you gave too much at the office and had to strap on a flimsy excuse to make it through the day.
FAKE feels like an extra limb.
Pretending is an amputation that’s having an identity crisis. Follow the weird tracks back to where they join again with your standing-tall self – figure out where you started to tilt. Then count your limbs and remain intact.
TRUE feels like reunion with a missing part.
{ PEP TALKS deliver a bracing blast of Grace }
Related reading: Pep Talk | Dance, Avoid the Rush – Finish Last
Flickr photo: a frivolous moment, by jenny downing
“Genius is an African who dreams up snow.”
Vladimir Nabokov
Flickr photo: Winter Meal, by Jan Tik
{ FRIDAY PHOTOS offer the lift of beauty }
Related viewing: Friday Photo | Detours
My copy of Warren Berger’s book bristles with Post-It Notes. Its full title is Glimmer: How Design Can Transform Your Life, Your Business, and Maybe Even the World and it features the visionary ideas of Bruce Mau, along with other designers and thinkers on the topic. I’m forcing myself to stop at page 50 and recommend it to you right now. It’s important.
I have a new theory: highly sensitive people (HSPs) are perfectly suited for being designers. I’m so convinced that we’re extremely valuable precisely because of our various traits, and this book supports that idea in many different ways.
The innate curiosity, complex thinking abilities, and long-viewing we’re capable of as HSPs puts us within sight of visions that are out there, but that might actually work.
What if we saw ourselves as capable and effective at designing the world we want to live in? What if we start with the assumption that we’re built to press our faces up against the outer edge of the envelope and look beyond, to reach out and grasp what didn’t exist until we thought to touch it?
By relying on “abductive reasoning,” or the ability to think about and picture what might be, designers can glimpse possibilities that lie on the other side of the fence.
~ Warren Berger, Glimmer
Designers “live in an expansive world where they believe the only thing limiting us is the stuff we haven’t figured out yet. And they’re excited about it. You’ll hear them say things like, ‘I’m working on this really cool problem that has no answer!’ That’s what they live for.”
~ Roger Martin, Dean of the Rotman School of Management, as quoted in Glimmer
We need you. We need you. We need you. Your valuable ideas, your whacky imaginings, your unpolished, half-formed, rough, barely describable flights of fancy contain miracles with the leverage to change the trajectory of the planet.
What we’ve found is, if someone has an enthusiasm or curiosity about many different disciplines, then they can be more flexible, more empathetic, and more engaged with the world.
~ Tim Brown, IDEO’s Chief Executive, as quoted in Glimmer
Find some way to pursue what intrigues you. Never mind if no one else is intrigued. That’s the point. Be first. Be brave. Be so curious you drench yourself in questions and come out cleansed, a gift cradled in your hands.
Feeling lost on a project can be the first step toward finding an original solution.
~ Warren Berger, Glimmer
Related reading: Bruce Mau Design’s Manifesto for Growth, Creativity Prompts Compendium
“Refuse to fall down. If you cannot refuse to fall down, refuse to stay down,
lift your heart toward heaven like a hungry beggar,
ask that it be filled and it will be filled.”
~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes
Flickr photo: pantheon pilaster, looking up, by antmoose
{ FRIDAY PHOTOS offer the lift of beauty }
Related viewing: Looking Up
We think we can’t see. We think we are blind. We think we are looking at something tiny and limiting and there’s nothing there.
But the world is chock full of tricks. The eye, the mind, the spirit, expand and contract depending on how we look and where we look and what we want to see.
Before you dash off to another place, thinking you’ve got it wrong yet again, stay where you are for a moment more. Inhale the dim light of this place. You had your reasons. You followed a trail to right here. Now, even from the tight space in which you find yourself, focus into the distance.
You will find open doors. Shadows will lift. Perspective will grab you and pull you, intact and filling fast, through the keyhole. Into a world big enough for the new you.
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Flickr photo: Look!, by AnnaKika
Related reading: Pep Talk | Zero In, Looking Up
“Today I am grateful for detours.”
~ aussiegall
Flickr photo: 30 Days of Gratitude – Day 22, by aussiegall,
aka Louise Docker of Looking Glass Images
{ FRIDAY PHOTOS offer the lift of beauty }
Related viewing: 32 Ways to Increase Your Income (with photo by aussiegall)
