In Hot Water

The second half. The pleasant comfort of baking bread and whiling away your evenings reading seem a distant memory this year. The promise of slow, somehow lagging. And there is a little while yet to go. 2020. The year we’ll all remember for its exceptional nature.

The second half of this year has been accelerated for me. I’m so very lucky though. I’m safe, employed, supported both at home and at work. I’m also bone-tired. Some of it is of my own making (as you’ll see).

Today, I cracked a little bit. And I cracked over a boiled egg.

I was making an egg salad sandwich for lunch for my husband and me. I boiled the eggs the same way I always do. Cold water. Bring to simmer. Take off the heat. Cover for 15. Perfect eggs, right?

Not today.

Today, the membrane wouldn’t give and the entire thing disintegrated in my hands. The quivering whites simply clung to the shell, exposing the bulbous yellow, the colour of a cloudy whipped up marble. I wasn’t happy about this. My eggs are usually perfect. It wasn’t the actual eggs - we just had them the other day. It must be me. It’s definitely me. I can’t boil eggs and I can’t do much else.

“You’re too hard on yourself,” my husband said, “It’s just an egg,” he pointed out as I worked myself up into an untenable state for 10 minutes.

Lunch was now the dark cloud in my otherwise quiet day. This is what happens when you have to much time to process.

The quickfire pace of the autumn finally gave and I took a few days off to catch up on sleep and do some laundry and get my head back on straight (a forced reprieve that was needed). I’m not used to large empty swaths of nothingness - life has always been scrambling between one crisis and another - it’s addictive, this productivity cycle. I’d rather clean out a closet or polish the knobs on the stove than sit there doing little. I’ll sign up for things, cramming my schedule with activities that render me exhausted, so that I fall into bed desperately tired each evening. And then I do the whole thing again. But I’m trying to maintain a level of productivity from five years ago under the acute stress of a global pandemic. We all are. And it’s not fair, is it?

All this fuss over an egg. But even when you’re in isolation with the rest of the world, the lessons keep on coming. I’m fairly certain it’s a call to dutifully subtract the nonsense that threads through my everyday - mostly the nonsense I create for myself. And to take the foot off the gas. What’s the end state here?

All the meditative walks in the world won’t help you surface it. It’s that ability to deliberately hold discomfort in the air like an unresolved note at the end of a song. It’s there. You have to be alright with it.

And so we come to this: Fewer cracks at room temperature. Lunch can be imperfect. Drink some water and hold space. It won’t feel good, but then again, it doesn’t have to.

Here’s a few things to read:

For Home Cooks, Burnout is a Reality This Holiday in NYT

I Believe that Marriage is a Sacred Union in The New Yorker

All the nice gulls love a sailor. ugh in The London Review of Books

Brene Brown speaks to President Obama

Cut Fruit

Around the world, people have been locked down for a solid two months. Many of us (barring those who are keeping the world running) have had the time to nest, reflect, reorganize and reimagine what life looks like now and what we’ll want it to look like after. The rituals of our days have changed with many more people in one spot. And many of us have had to opportunity to rekindle or perhaps, go deep in exploring the relationships in our lives.

Of course, this lockdown has given way to thousands of memes. People find ways to be funny when they discover new things about their spouses, parents, siblings and friends. Humour has in so many ways kept the world ticking, too.

My favourite memes of course, are the ones that come out of the shared experience of Asian cultures. And my favourite of all of them have been the “cut fruit” jokes. Things like, “are you even an immigrant if your mom doesn’t interrupt your Zoom meeting to bring you cut fruit”

Mostly, cut fruit has been the purview of mothers. My own would bring a big platter of orange slices, apples, peaches, grapes, plums or whatever else was on hand for a snack in the evening. And if it was the summer, chili and lemon usually accompanied it (try it, if you haven’t - it’ll change your life). Or perhaps a gigantic bowl full of cubed watermelon. Or mangoes, where we would fight over who got to suck all the juice off the pit. All three of us would crowd on a couch to watch terrible shows on TLC or gossiping and sometimes even just silently eating.

Cut fruit is the ultimate demonstration of love. Our parents cut our food up for us when we’re young, long before we have the manual dexterity. It shows that they don’t want us to suffer through the tough pits and peels, the seeds and the “icky bits” like the butt end of a banana, to get to the good stuff. It says, “I took the time to peel, slice (or dice), pit and arrange this for you so you wouldn’t have to work hard.” For anyone who has tried it, it is intensely laborious. Wrestling with slippery mangoes, projectile grapes across the kitchen floor. Cut fruit is a warrior’s battlefield full of frustration and seeds.

Then it’s no wonder that those who care about us most are willing to go to such lengths so we can literally enjoy the fruits of their labour. Just the other day, as we visited my grandmother-in-law, as we left the house, she handed us a bag of cut pears - for after the fast because we’ll be hungry. You’re never too old for cut fruit. And you’ll never say no.

As we approach the end of the holy month of Ramadan, our home has been extra quiet. No sports, not many meals during the day (except for me, always eating cashews for whatever reason). And lots of time to think about things. I’ve also - though I’m not a mother, only graced with the title of Big Sister - started cutting fruit. So we have something quick to grab between Zoom meetings. And so my husband has something he can eat with his breakfast when he rises at 5:00 to eat before his fast begins.

Though none of us know how much longer we might have to be in our homes and how slow the creep back with normalcy will be, I for one, will continue to reflect on everything in my life. And when we finally surface at the end of the tunnel, I plan on asking myself the one question that I ought to have asked about all the decisions and people and labour in my life so far: Is this worth cutting fruit for?

Slow

I remember when I was young, one day, my mother made dinner out of two potatoes. My father was away - we don’t know exactly where - and she was left to take care of two children on her own. I don’t remember much about the days or moments, but I do remember it involved two potatoes. We ate that evening because my mother always knew how to make do.

For anyone who has grown up in impoverished circumstances, or as new immigrants to a foreign land, survivors of natural and man-made disasters, or war-stricken environments, you’ll recognize the feeling of constantly being in the hurricane, buffeted from here to there as you tried to live with a sense of normalcy. For better or worse, you’ve learned to live in a world that is not always on your side.

We’re facing this today. A global pandemic of unprecedented (in our lifetimes) proportions has all but brought society to its knees. The directive is stay inside. Avoid contact. Only get what you need. Help others while you can. We are not used to having our freedoms limited. In a sense, the march of time has stopped and maybe even reversed.

I can see the discomfort of some in this situation. The sense of utter panic and the feeling that the excess we live with is, in fact, not enough. How will we manage? Do I need one package of turkey bacon or should I grab 17 just in case?

There is a creeping realization that, perhaps, we’ve gone too far. We’re using too much, we’re doing too much and we’re burning up. The forced rest, the deliberate conversation, the inability to escape from the things that are bothering us have now been foisted upon us. So many people are taking pause. Instead of simply staying inside, so many of us are being forced to go inside. To actually take some stock.

The beauty of it is, our survival also depends on the goodness in others. For every person trying to mark up prices on necessities, there are scores more knocking door-to-door and making sure elders have enough to eat. So many of my friends and family are working in areas that put them in direct contact with the general public. People are the essential service.

Survival is just that. It makes your question the necessity and the utility of so many things we take for granted. It knocks on your door to take away things you think you needed, but that turn out to be mere luxuries.

You need less. You can do better. You should do with less.

Some of us continue to live like we are in the eye of the storm. The survival instinct that I inherited from my childhood never left me. It’s a deep and ingrained part of me. It doesn’t serve me well many a time (does everything have to seem like it’s on fire every day?) But it has given me a confident sense of calm in my world, especially when we face a global pandemic, head on. I know how to read and clean and write and walk my days away. I, too, can conjure up dinner from two potatoes.

This week is the first week in a long time that I heard birds chirping in the morning. I’m sure they do everyday, but I don’t hear them. I’m too busy stuffing a Tupperware into my bag, while putting on my shoes and yelling at my husband about the traffic report on the freeway. This week is not that. My hair isn’t on fire. Survival instincts are never far and the eye of the storm is a surprisingly quiet place to be.

We’ll be fine. We’ve done so much more with so little.

Ritual

I remember reading “Around the World in 80 Days” when I was a child. Phileas Fogg, the protagonist is an exacting man, who does things with such economy and precision that not a moment is wasted. He’s described as “repose in action.” When I was nine, I didn’t know what that meant. All I knew is, that this was a character after my own heart.

As a child, I sought out habit and ritual more than I did adventure. I was timid, nervous, thoughtful and, for all intents and purposes, well-spoken. While other children chased each other about on the playground (of the many schools I attended), I spent many hours reading in the library.

Reading grounded me and it was the first real ritual I made mine. I enjoyed it so immensely and I still do.

While I’ve allowed more adventure into my life now, I’m a creature of habit. I love ritual. My mornings are timed, unwittingly, to such exactitude that it’s alarming even to me sometimes. I’ve been using the same cup for my morning beverage since I was 13 years old. It makes exactly the right amount of coffee that I can drink by 6 AM, when I head to the gym.

Since I got married a few months ago, rituals have become collective. My partner, who is much more fluid in the way he conducts his business, has embraced some of my idiosyncrasies, with an understanding that I need them for my day to feel like it fit right. In turn, we’ve come up with rituals together that bind our collective time. We do crosswords on Sunday mornings and make big breakfasts, we watch Family Feud on weekday evenings.

While people might find ritual constrictive, there is a grace and elegance to being able to do the same actions over and over with precision. It creates a respect for the time you have been given. Most of all, I think it connects us with the world in a way that is individually and collectively constructive.

As human beings, we’ve always been drawn to the North Star of habit. We seek it out in prayer and how we collectively organize ourselves in the world. After all, hopping on public transit has an almost ritualistic quality to it. Were someone to go and lie on the floor of the bus, no doubt, glances would be exchanged (and the requisite authorities called upon).

We like to think of ourselves as adventuresome and pioneering. But we come back to the comforts always of the things we know. They enable us to understand and be in the world on our own terms and connect us to the notion that we are, in fact, just how we want to be.

Anchoring myself in ritual allows me to move gracefully though a world that is, at best, unpredictable. It is the fulcrum of my living every day. As I get older, it also happens to be the thing that lets me deviate when I need to, with the full knowledge that I can come back when I want.

As wild as it is, life necessitates anchor points. It is only when we’ve fully understood the beauty, necessity and elegance of ritual, that we fully start to understand ourselves and the world around us. It is what enriches those experiences outside of our ordinary lives, so that, the one day that you drink your coffee from a different cup, you notice.

Purpose

Decades are funny things. While absolutely nothing changes outside of a couple of numbers, we are bound to stare into an existential abyss or to take stock of our lives in some way. 2020 is upon us now and it feels heavy with meaning in so many ways.

How life has changed in some absolutely remarkable ways this last few years. From deaths to marriages to moves to career leaps. At the same time, it’s also nothing remarkable. The passage of time forces change on us in many ways. The world around us changes, and as creatures of nature, we are bound to adapt to stay alive. So in some ways, all of our progress is the march of time, no matter how many CEOs tell you otherwise.

As I get older, some of the things that have meant the most to me over my life have amplified, while others have fallen away. After a challenging year (both good and difficult), I’ve started to think about the meaningfulness of my actions. Last year has tested my patience, has made me ineffably happy, and has angered me to the point of physical reaction. And it has also taught me of the absolute fragility of time and how, now more than ever, it’s important to be purposeful in thought and action.

There are lots of people who are much wiser than I am in this world, so I will not profess to know anything more or less than my own experience. However, I can’t deny that middle age is not so far away now. So this year, the idea of purpose is top of mind for me.

I’ve decided this year to make that my choice as well. Here are a few ways that I’m going to show up with purpose:

Switch off - I love staying in touch, but I find now more than ever, that the phone is an absolute distraction. There is truly nothing going on that needs my attention that badly. So this year, I’m choosing to spend more time switching it off, or putting it away while I do more things I want to do.

Buy less - After Thanksgiving, I was completely turned off by the feeding frenzy that is holiday shopping. I’ve never liked having a lot of things and the fact that we buy and never have enough is starting to impact the damage we’re doing to our world. So this year, I’m choosing only to buy necessities. I have enough things and I don’t want to pass on the message that stuff equals purpose.

Get out - For the short length of my relationship, my partner and I have always gone on a New Years Day walk together. I always come back with more clarity. I think it’s the combination of being outside and being with him that gives me that. So this year, I’m getting outside more (allergies be damned).

Show up - Between work, wedding planning, family things and the business of living, I’ve become terrible at seeing and spending time with the people i love. So this year, I’m committed to revitalizing those relationships. I look forward to moving together through the next decade with them.

Engage - I’m definitely going to spend more time writing and reading than I did in the last few years. It’s so vital both to my craft and my sanity. I’ve recognized that there are serious gaps in spirit when I don’t get to do those things, and the whole thing makes me less interested in everything else.

Connect - Part of living with purpose for me, is going to be how connected I can be with my inner thoughts and emotions. Feelings have never been easy for me, but I’m learning that when we approach our inner states with a sense of curiosity, rather than judgment, we get a whole lot more information. And learning to trust that gut is critical. It is after all, the first sign that we need to mind the gap.

This is a long list. And I know I’m going to stumble over it this year. I’ll likely lose my temper or spend too much time on Instagram or not enough time reading. And I’ll have to learn to forgive myself and hop back on when that happens. It’s not going to be perfect. But it’ll be a lot closer to living a life that has meaning for me.

At the end of the day, we are deeply responsible for ourselves and our actions in this world. I’d like to spend that short time building meaning. How are you planning to show up in the new decade?

A few things to think about:

Life on the Edge by Akiko Busch

My Year of No Shopping by Anne Patchett

Art, Work and Life with Lisa Congdon on The Good Life Project

Hummingbird

Vancouver winters are characterized by long bouts of rain, starting in October. Like any of the cities along the Pacific Northwest, we start to see life shrink into the muddy depths of soil, going into hibernation until the spring (which is coincidentally also characterized by long bouts of rain). It’s not uncommon to see angles of geese flying south, honking like so many cars stuck in traffic. The birds and bees quite literally go elsewhere. Bear sightings increase and then slowly decrease. Coyotes lope back into the urban swathes of wilderness.

Our home is in a sparsely populated urban area in a suburb that is desperately trying to become more urban. We have hardware stores and lots of parks nearby. I like it most because of the flowers that line our walkway in the summer and the cascading skyline of mountains behind tall fir trees. And the Starbucks that is also conveniently a block away.

It’s fairly normal for bugs to fly into our home. The ideal mix of nature and uncharted territory that is the tall apartment building makes it so bees are fairly (and frighteningly) at home here during the summer. They sometimes die a valiant death trying to get out of the apartment. This is generally not a problem in the winter, and no other creatures have ever made their way in.

This winter day, my husband and I were getting ready to go out to one of the many holiday festivities that seem to start earlier and earlier each year. As I was waiting for him to finish getting ready, I heard a very loud buzzing sound. I turned around to where the windows are, and spotted a hummingbird. A hummingbird! Twelve stories above ground level. In late, rainy (frankly depressing) fall, a fully grown hummingbird had made its way into the home.

Thereby, started an adventure of trying to get it out of the house. We opened all (two) of the living room windows. We switched off the light, figuring the artificial glow was going to attract it. It fluttered overhead as it flew the full length of the living space. I screamed - you would too.

The bird kept hitting the glass windows. It had spotted the horizon and couldn’t get out, regardless of our best efforts to usher it outward. We tried to shoo it to no avail. Finally, exhausted, it settled on the strings that we pull to raise the blinds. It seemed all of us were exhausted by this entire ordeal that had already gone on for the last 15 minutes.

A short while later, it finally - and with no lack of effort - made its way out. We quickly shut the doors and windows before it had any other bright ideas.

As a writer, I’m prone to seeing the symbolism in the unusual. And so I think, it’s the perfect little lesson in unusual things that feed into the mundane. So here goes.

We all, at times, find ourselves in unusual situations, in unfamiliar territory. We are going along in life, when suddenly, we end up somewhere different from where we thought we would be, at a time we didn’t expect to be there. Despite all the best efforts of those around us to open windows and usher us out loudly, we keep hitting our heads against the same obstacles. We can see exactly where we need to be, but can’t seem to find the opening to get there (even though it’s utterly obvious to others).

And when we get tired, it’s okay to stop for a moment and re-evaluate. I’d like to think that Hummingbird needed a second after frantically expending all that energy in one go. Soon enough, those openings become more clear to us as we slowly gather our wits about us again. And then we’re off to where we might need to be next.

I hate to belabour a point, which may have simply been a freak moment of nature. But I can’t help but think some things come to us exactly when we need them, as unwelcome or unwanted as they might be at the time.

So this is a good last thought for 2019. We’re rounding off the decade (if that means anything to you). For those seeking clarity or those facing the unfamiliar (I think we all are), there is always a way. It’s not always totally clear. It helps to listen to those whispering or yelling that way out for you.

For this next year, I hope that clarity becomes more apparent. And that you rest when you need to, before you journey forward.

The Beauty of the Slash

There is an ideal for writers. Most of us have fallen victim to it. It’s the burning desire to be left alone, to our own devices to create. Ideally, we’d like to get locked away in a cabin where we can have endless amounts of time and cups of tea to write the Next Great Novel.

I’ve tried it on a micro-level. I think we all have. It generally goes like this: If I have all of Sunday free, I’ll spend it writing/painting/practicing music/going to the dance studio/working on my presentation. Inevitably the gremlin of discipline comes through. Somebody calls or you’ve somehow managed to do everything but the thing you set out to do. And so begins the process of berating yourself for wasting the one precious day when you could have finally, finally mastered Italian, if only you hadn’t washed all the pillows.

I’m this person. I think on some level, anyone who likes to create - and not just in the purview of arts - is this person. Flow is such a good and lovely thing when it happens. If it happens. The stage gate is getting past the big “if” that often makes us feel inadequately prepared to add meaning to our creative lives.

Over time though, I’ve come to realize that we’ve had the process of creating hopefully wrong. To say nothing terrible of the people with the discipline and - perhaps dependence on the paycheque - to create at a moment’s notice. Unless you’ve got a patron (whether you’re coupled or not), creating doesn’t seem to happen when we’ve got a vast vista of time and space to do it. Rather, that open space becomes suffocating. It’s a lot like singing in a concrete room. You expect an echo but the sound simply drops to the ground with a gross thud.

Creativity - the desire and urge of it - needs constraints. We need to be, as human beings, bound to some commitment, in order to make it happen. It’s part of the reason that the slash exists. Many creators are many things all at once, breaking their titles up with slashes. Artist/chemist; Musician/Manager; Chef/Writer. Some of these might be out of necessity, but some of them are simply because we must create conditions for ourselves where creating becomes a need, rather than a desire or whim. Whims tend to be fanciful, needs, much more forceful.

In an interview, Tania Katan (theatre trained evangelist who has made some very creative leaps in her career), mentions that she used to write in the mornings before she went to her 9-5 job. One day, in an effort to complete a play, she quit that job and took on writing full time. What she discovered that her plays virtually relied on her day job for source material. That is, the characters were based in real life situations that occurred while she was busy working. Essentially, her creativity relied on constraint, which in turned fuelled it. She’s not the only one who has done it. Lots of creative people, have used time as their own personal constraint. Knowing there is not much of it in a day, it becomes necessary to rearrange it to meet your creative purpose.

In the real world, creativity relies on it just the same. Whether you’re creating a product or working within the parameters of a physical space, you’re faced by constraints, which necessitate you make connections or turn ideas on their heads. What we use then can sometimes become secondary to how we use it.

And it’s utterly thrilling.

Immersion and boredom have their place and are really important for ideas to form and coagulate. But vast amounts of time to stare at a blank page is frankly horrifying.

I recently started carrying a notebook again. Something that I used to do in high school and stopped doing when my purse became heavy, and so did life. These days, I can only find snatches of time to read and write. As life changes, and priorities shift, my sprawling Sunday afternoons have given way to a noisy chaos of living more fully. So those precious moments are even more so. The practice of capitalizing on them is still something that I’m working on.

If necessity is the mother of invention, then creativity is its long-lost sister. The creative impulse is a funny thing. It’s often a blip of an idea or a quick “I wonder” and then it fades away. Capturing it within a constraint seems all but necessary to realizing whatever it is you’re trying to achieve. In the end, where you put the slash is up to you, where it’s on your own person/ in what you do.

In creating, give yourself the time. But not too much.

Things to think about and read:

Tania Katan’s interview on the Good Life Project

Anne Lammott on Creativity - Brainpickings

Yo Yo Ma on Successful Creative Collaboration - HBR

To-Be

The waning days of summer are a confusing time for wardrobes. People don all kinds of combinations: Trench-coats and sandals, shorts and parkas, tank tops and fleece pants. It’s the time of year where you’re in between what was and what is to be.

While there are plenty of days of sunlight left, many outdoor movies and festivals to attend, and many barbecues to indulge in before summer truly ends, there is a comfort is knowing that the change in season is around the corner. I relish in the rain tapping at my window as I sleep at night and the almost-but-not-quite suffocating warmth of coffee shops full of wet scarves and seasonal drinks.

The transition from summer to autumn is special. it’s a time when we gear up to get out of holiday mode. When I was in school, there was a special feeling that came with the thought of reinventing yourself for a new year. Though the reinvention most of the time involved getting new jeans.

Transitions - any transitions - place us in a strange world between the nostalgia of old and the springy newness of what’s ahead. There come so many lasts which leave us silently and lightly mourning, while not knowing what’s quite ahead.

But that also happens to be the beauty of transitions. They are heavy with the unexplored and undesigned. They herald in new eyes and ears and doing things differently. Even if in the fall that simply means new soup recipes. We can revel in the idea that we will somehow act differently and embrace all of it wholeheartedly.

When we transition - seasons, relationships, our own being, we carry along the past with us, though it looks very different. We are taking with us, the sometimes-heavy somethings into what is to be. In doing that, we are asking our past to transform with us - please would you change as I change. To look just a little bit different, so we can make room for what hasn’t quite taken place. And sometimes the past cooperates. And sometimes it doesn’t. And sometimes it’s better if it doesn’t.

This morning, I walked in the crisp late summer air to the library a few blocks from where I work to drop off a book. As I did, I recalled that this is the last time I’ll be walking to the library before I go away to get married. It seems inconsequential but in some ways profound: to think that the every day act will have somehow transformed into something else in a month’s time. The act itself won’t change. Everything around it might. Perhaps I’ll be picking up a book for my to-be husband. Perhaps he’ll have driven me there. Perhaps he’ll be working from nearby and we’ll stop for coffee. Perhaps, perhaps…

The to-be is undefined and sometimes unrefined - rough-hewn and itchy. And sometimes we mix up our personhoods in trying to define it before it is ready to happen. But just like the change in season, we ought to, I think, let it come slowly. We can wrap ourselves in its being when it arrives. Like a warm scarf on that first day of autumn when the chill is more or less here to stay, thank goodness.

Some things to think about:

Anne Lamott on Love, Despair and Change on Brainpickings

A cover of “Changes” by Seu Jorge

No Small Miracle

“Instructions for living a life. Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it. ”

— Mary Oliver

Every April, we congregate in the evenings for seven days to say special prayers for those around the world who are in difficulty. We do this twice a year. During that one week, the jamatkhana parking lot is generally quite full as lots of people come through to take part in the collective act of remembering God. This year was a special year as the week fell close the holy month of Ramadhan. Ramadhan is observed by millions of people around the world through acts of prayer and charity that recommit us to the faith of Islam. So the month felt heavy with meaning.

On my first day, I parked my car in my near usual spot, having arrived early enough to beat the large crowd. In one of the landscaped planters nearby, I noticed a sitting goose. She was in quiet repose, having placed all the weight into the ground. She wasn’t moving very much.

The next day was the same. Only, someone had gone ahead and placed a porcelain bowl of water in front of her.

And the next day, orange cones had appeared around her as a warning sign to those in the parking lot to respect her space.

She was in prime nesting season.

And so for every day that week, I would walk by (not too close. Canada geese are the testiest of creatures, especially when they’re nesting) and see her sitting. Sometimes she would be adjusting herself. Other times, an intrepid crow would be helping itself to the water from her bowl.

I named her Malek. Because we must name the things that we see to give them meaning. It’s a name that’s found several generations before mine. And in Arabic, it means “owner.”

So our visits continued for a full month, or maybe more. After the week of prayers, I would visit every Friday. Not much about her condition changed.

Then one day, in late May, a gander appeared in the parking lot. His slow amble around the perimeter of the nest told us that something was about to happen. We were close to delivery and he was making sure that nothing would disturb the upcoming birth.

I am not quite sure when the goslings were born. But one day I arrived at prayers only to find that the water bowl was gone. And all that was left was pieces of shell. A friend sent me a video soon after. Malek had given birth to five goslings. They clambered on top of each other noisily, trying to get their parents’ attention.

But that was it. And no more.

Every single day, we have the opportunity to witness miracles. Some of them, our own. Others, belonging to other people. And still others, belonging to the natural world. It is no miracle that we’re here today. And no miracle that I was tied to the narrative of something outside of me.

I invested my time in the witnessing of something else’s miracle. And that fuelled my happiness. And for a short time endowed my weekly visits to prayers with extra meaning. I was witness to he world’s natural order.

And in the end, it’s always temporary. I’ll never see Malek or her geese again (I wish I had a chance to name them too!), nor would I recognize if I did. It is up to us to find those pockets in which we can view the world slightly differently. Where we can name and create meaning for ourselves. Where we can connect to every greater and ever smaller. These areas in between is where life’s dull thrum becomes a vibrant heartbeat; the pulse of which assures us that we’re not alone.

Some more on miracles and things:

Mary Oliver on Happiness - Brainpickings

How to be invisible by Akiko Busch - New York Times

Nature. Beauty. Gratitude by Louie Schwarzberg - TED

What a 9,000 year-old spruce taught me by Rachel Sussman - Nautilus

Paying Attention to the Thinkers

“Poirot,’ I said. ‘I have been thinking.’
’An admirable exercise my friend. Continue it.’”

— Agatha Christie

On a couple of different occasions over the last few weeks I’ve been speaking to friends and family about people we know whose ambition is palpable. They want what our view of success looks like and they are outwardly motivated and loud enough to ask for it, whether this means creating the kinds of relationships that propel them to greater heights or loudly stating their own success.

Part of me admires these people. To be what I would see as brazen in going after what you want is not an inherently wrong thing to do. In fact, it’s entirely commendable. But as is entirely part of my nature, I can’t help but look at the missing pieces.

Just today, I was listening to Susan Cain’s now famous TED talk on the power of introverts as part of an internal work training program I’m doing. In it, she mentions the switch in the early 20th century for a North American tendency to admire the man of contemplation to the shift to admiring the man of action (obviously, it was men because women were too busy fainting from restrictive clothing). This shift in the pattern on who got the limelight heralded in by the self-help books that lauded charismatic salespeople. Hence, the man of contemplation was driven to the fringes of society, relegated largely to ivory towers and quiet laboratories.

Our almost pathological need to measure action and momentum is leaving us in some ways, much worse off. It drives action for action sake. I’d venture that it also contributes to the many mental health issues that continue to surface in our personal lives. After all, if you feel compelled never to sit down and think and to always act, how do you recalibrate? How do you synthesize what you know to create new solutions and perspectives?

Are we giving people enough time to think? For me, the answer is a resounding no. We don’t. We encourage people to fill their days with movement. Then, everyone falls into bed exhausted and does it again the next day.

When we give people the benefit of thinking, of the time to think, the solutions we get back are, well, thoughtful. They aren’t hurried along because they need to happen yesterday. They consider more aspects than what’s currently on the table. We aren’t driving the process externally, we’re growing it internally. As individuals and within groups, having the chance to turn over ideas, to sleep on them for a day, gives us the benefit of so much more perspective than we’d ever know was possible

In my work, like the work of many others, I use two major skills: management and creativity. One skill gathers, collates, synthesizes, researches and coordinates. The other messages, connects, sparks. The bridge between these two skills is time. Time to think. I need time to take what I have, tease it apart, turn it on its head and find new ways of presenting it.

Thought and thinking lies at the very heart of human activity. It’s through contemplation that we have our greatest science, literature, art, politics, philosophy. Thought is what has created great leaders.

Action is a very necessary part of the world. It’s how things get done around here. It’s what literally keeps us ticking along. But we have a vastly sophisticated mechanism that helps us take the best actions. And so it behooves us to pay attention to the thinkers. They’re not the loudest people there, or even the ones driven by action. They are the ones that will take the space to amplify what works and perhaps to start the first spark that leads us to ignite.

Some things to think about:

How do you maximize your tiny, short life by Neil Paricha

If you can’t have fewer meetings, have better ones on IDEO

Five invaluable work tips for introverts on IDEO

Hannah Arendt on the Life of the Mind on Brainpickings

This lovely little poem by Ame Dyckman