Crossroads Dispatches

the higher, wider, more blazing, beckoning pull

"The only things that concerned the sheep were food and water... They’ve forgotten how to rely on their own instinct, because I lead them to nourishments." - Santiago the shephard boy hero on page 7, The Alchemist

In the bestselling fable, The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho (full audio) opens as the Andalusian shephard Santiago deciding to follow a vague hunch pieced from a night dream with hesitation, and eventually wherever it may lead. 

For beings with a heart pulsing to the tune of the Infinite Eternal and a spark of life burning within them, food and water become insufficient as nourishment. Hunger and thirst isn't only a matter of matter.

As I write this in early February, the sunlight peaceably filters and palm trees sway through and outside the windows in New Orleans. I have the knowledge of the security of future supply of the basics of water, food, and the welcomed stay to caretake rent-free here as long and languidly as I wish.

It has been an unexpected sojourn this past year -- an inward plunge into sublime solitude. Although I wrote of impending adventure, that's not at all what unfolded. There were a few season of pruning and weeding everything second-hand and unoriginal and untrue.

A season of feeding and nurturing the malnourished. Time and space in the sensory rather than the virtual. Chopping carrots, mincing garlic, sauteeing kale, stirring miso, steaming salmon and gathering at the oval dinner table at an old landlord's home with a cancer diagnosis rather than checking Twitter feeds. Reading The Little Prince on the grass in the little neighborhood pocket park with the lumbering live oak and swing rather than reading my email.

Now, you'd think, should be a good time to sit back and simply enjoy the upcoming Mardi Gras festivities. There's no rationale to go anywhere, do anything different. In fact there is the subtle lull of inertia to remain. 

Although I typically have the house all to my self, a houseload of street performers and musicians tumbled in and out the last two months. In the midst of the bustle, I carved out sacred time to be still and listen. In that silence, the raw fragments of surrender cohered and crystallized into the fragrance of the next step. This verse jumped vivid for me, and has riveted my attention:

"Forget the former things;
    do not dwell on the past.

See, I am doing a new thing!
    Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?
I am making a way in the wilderness
    and streams in the wasteland." - Bible (NIV), Isaiah 43:18-19

Comfort aside, I cannot deny the higher, wider, more blazing, beckoning pull. “We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down," said Kurt Vonnegut. The day BEFORE the coalescing crescendo into clarity, viscerally I felt the intensity of ego terror before the cliff of the Unknown: the heart constricted, the throat strangled, the breath short, the air dense and thick, the clenching what-ifs of the finite.

"The comfort zone is supposed to keep your life safe, but what it really does is keep your life small.... A few rare individuals refuse to live limited lives... They have something that gives them the strength to endure pain--a sense of purse.... A sense of purpose doesn't come from thinking about it. It comes from taking action that moves you toward the future. The moment you do this, you activate a force more powerful than the desire to avoid pain. We call this the 'Force of Forward Motion.' Its power is the power of life itself. Everything in life is evolving into the future with a sense of purpose--from a single organism to a species to the entire planet. Dylan Thomas called it "The force that through the green fuse drives the flower."” - The Tools, by Phil Stutz and Barry Michels

Even with the immense discomfort of fear, the green fuse that drives the flower kept on fulfilling life. 

Ten years ago EXACTLY today, February 6, 2014, I commenced this Crossroads Dispatches blog. It's not my first blog. It's not my second either. The first I began on Dave Winer's Rdio platform, the second was called The Bigger Picture on Blogger. I abandoned both. We've had ups and downs, but I think the reason this one struck a chord is the thematic and name "Crossroads Dispatches" speaks to my deep draw for multi-layered meanings and High Romance (I read three versions of the Arthurian legends of the Round Table in 2013) even though at the time of this blog's founding I was ensconced in logic rather than lyricism. (It's easy to forget I was formerly a computer engineer, even when others do not so easily forget.)

My first post and fifth blog post cited this book and quote:

"In Africa, they say there are two hungers, the lesser hunger and the greater hunger. The lesser hunger is for the things that sustain life, the goods and services, and the money to pay for them, which we all need. The greater hunger is for an answer to the question "why?", for some understanding of what that life is for." - Hungry Spirit, Beyond Capitalism: A Quest for Purpose in the Modern World, Charles Handy (via very first Crossroads Dispatches blog post I wrote 10 years ago)

 

Someone once asked Helen Keller a provocative question. She answered, "What would be worse than being born blind? To have sight without vision." Concern for sheer survival alone feels like a tedious ministering to death. Survival needs are not a compelling vision. Perhaps there's a kernel of usefulness in them: "I need a job." -- What if instead of seeking provision from others, we were the creators of provision for others? Imagine opportunities to thrive for ourselves + together, junto, with others. "I need money." -- What if rather than compromise and cage our inspiration for wages, we unleashed our gifts unto the world? etc, etc. Flip the tedium of needs and problems and duty into desires and destinies (destinations) that catapult into captivating and enchanting and fulfillling visions to follow through.

"... don't be satisfied with stories, how things 
have gone with others. Unfold 
your own myth, without complicated explanation, 
so everyone will understand the passage, 
We have opened you.

Start walking toward Shams. Your legs will get heavy 
and tired. Then comes a moment 
of feeling the wings you've grown, 
lifting." - Rumi (via Howardism.org) 

Despite the immense shield of fear, the green fuse keeps sprouting through and as me. I breathe deep and I buy the one-way ticket to San Francisco this past Sunday. I wasn't planning on California in 2014 whatsoever yet that's where all the calls and clews whispered to me. Even Paulo Coelho's most recent Feb 5th post reveals a stepping stone in the path I'm walking which is more unusual, more unnerving, more daring than I'm letting on. Our clues are tailored and unique, yet I'll share it with you: "... behind the icy mask people wear - there is a heart of fire. That is why the warriors risk more than others."

A rush of release follows as the overlay of fear dissolves into its no-thingness revealing the foreground of peace and joy. Since that decision other contorted contractions have emerged in the simple spaciousness as it fathoms and figures out How, yet the Yes remains and shines in the foreground.

"When each day is the same as the next, it’s because people fail to recognize the good things that happen in their lives every day that the sun rises. In order to find the treasure, you will have to follow the omens. God has prepared a path for everyone to follow. You just have to read the omens that he left you."  - Paulo Coelho

---

This spring I'm planting a seed of vision.

Perhaps you'll join me in the garden. It's free (and freedom) online. Or join face-to-face in a "Innovating to the Heart's Delight" workshop in the San Francisco Bay Area (a work in progress--so don't be surprised if the content completely kaleidoscopes in a few days), or come walk-the-talk journey with us into Spain this summer or Ethiopia this fall. 

It's not solely mine or your own Personal Legend coming into ripeness, but widens inclusive of the whole cosmic pulsing symphony of which you are part. 

"Perhaps you will ask me, "Why are there no other drawing in this book as magnificent and impressive as this drawing of the baobabs?"

The reply is simple. I have tried. But with the others I have not been successful. When I made the drawing of the baobabs I was carried beyond myself by the inspiring force of urgent necessity." - 

“Run my dear,
From anything
That may not strengthen
Your precious budding wings.” 
― Hafez

p.s. This post is slowly easing us into a new tone, a new voice for this blog. Similar themes yet with more of our bold, whimsical, fantastical, imaginative, visionary, slightly futuristic "a new heaven and a new earth" facets revealed.

Art credits: Saharan caravan photo from fan blog, "The Journey of Santiago"; illustration from The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (an online version of The Little Prince book); photo by Ankur Sharma via DeviantArt.com; and lastly, the baobab tree illustration from The Little Prince as well.

whenever a mind is simple - Emerson

"Whenever a mind is simple and receives divine wisdom, old things pass away,--means, teachers, texts, temples fall; it lives now, and absorbs past and future into the present hour." - Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance

Sharing a short and sweet excerpt as I'm running out the door. Finished this week, Rocket Boys--now on my short list of favorite books. It's a first person account of a group of high school kids inspired by Sputnik to learn rocket science on their own in a small mining town.

This passage below takes place Thanksgiving weekend 1959 in Coalwood, West Virginia. (Yes, it's a true story.)

And happy gratefulness to all of you today. (Bonus, I'm launching--nope, not a rocket--a pop-up art project Penny for your Charms that urges you to also walk on water. Hope you can join in over the next month as it unfolds.)

I used up almost all of my [propellant material] zinc dust loading the Auk XXIII. Getting more was a problem. The BMCA [the boys' rocket club] treasury was bare. Still, I wasn't terribly worried about it. I just had this belief that whenever I needed anything to build my rockets, somehow it was going to be there, provided by the Lord or whatever foolish angels had taken on the BCMA as a project. O'Dell said he'd think about a way to get us some money.

. . . I was tense as I began the coundown. Although Quentin was confident, I was a little afraid of the big rocket. I took a deep breath and turned the firing switch on the professional-looking console Billy and Sherman had built. 

. . . There was no sign of our rocket at all. It had simply vanished. Quentin rang up and reported the same result downrange. A towering funnel of smoke gradually drifted over us. Auk XXIII was up there somewhere. What if it came down on the crowd or on us? What if it went uprange and landed in Coalwood again?

"I see it!" Billy yelped. Good old sharp-eyed Billy!

"Where?"

"There!"

It was just a dot, but it grew, and it was downrange, although veering toward Rocket Mountain. It hit the top of a big tree, which shivered from the impact, as if to let us know it had caught our rocket. Picking up our shovels, we ran down the slack, the crowd cheering us as we went past.

"Forty-two seconds," Roy Lee cried breathlessly as we ran.

"Seven thousand fifty-six feet," both Quentin and I called out at about the same moment, both of us capable now of working out the calculation in our heads. It was our highest rocket yet, but it wasn't what my nozzle design had predicted. "What happened?" I worried as we pounded down the slack. "According to the equations, it should have gone three thousand feet higher."

"Don't know," Quentin puffed. "Have to look at the rocket."

Billy led us up the mountain, weaving through the trees and bursting through a line of thick rhododendron into a green glade beneath a ridge. Auk XXVIII was buried there, up to its fins in soft, wet loam. O'Dell looked around and held up his hand. "Stop, boys," he ordered. "Don't trample this place!"

We pulled up short. "Why?"

He dropped to his knees beside a big oak and dug carefully with his shovel, pulling up a gnarly root. "You know what this is?" 

When we all shrugged, he smiled. "Money."

"Not another crazy scheme," Roy Lee groaned.

"No, this one's for real. It's ginseng. This glade's full of it. I've never seen so much!"

"What the hell is ginseng?" Roy Lee asked.

"Indian medicine. People over in Japan and places like that think it cures everything."

"How much is it worth?"

"Well," he said as he dug up another root. "I don't think we're going to have to worry about zinc-dust money for a while."

I had vaguely heard of the stuff being dug around the county, but had never actually seen any of it before. I looked at the dirty ginseng specimen O'Dell handed me, thinking of God and whatever angels He had assigned to BCMA. "The Lord preserves the simple," was Mom's response when I mentioned this to her.

Another favorite excerpt from Rocket Boys by Homer Hickam, Jr. in my Footnotes blog.

Photo credits: Rocket lighting (and explanation of rocket lightning) from Gizmodo.

the quixotic ideal of reality-hacking, and fears (disguised as waiting) in the creative process

Fear and the creative process is and isn't spoken about much. Here's a snippet from a e-letter I wrote a musically-inclined friend today. What the heck, I'll publish it.

oh, it's john cage's 100th birthday today (um if he were alive i suppose or wherever he is in time-space)

julie lazar spoke at SFMoMa yesterday with tons of slides since she and Cage collaborated on a visual composition (rolywholyover circus) that traveled to five museums

anyhow, julie said she moved to NYC when she was 17 to become a dancer. she worked in ticket booth at lincoln center for day job and happened to get some tickets to see a john cage performance

she said, "I didn't like what I saw or heard but i decided then and there to dedicate my life to artists that help us [didn't catch precisely how she worded it: shattered our illusions? expanded our vision? etc]... My idea of what life was was blown open."

isn't that amazing?! she didn't like it, but it didn't matter--it was how it jolted her out of her expectations that mattered

i often WORRY (needlessly) that i will be judged, shunned, exiled, crucified or something worse for doing precisely that--jostling/shattering people's expectations [rather than bending over backwards meeting expectations].... and yet that's why it moved her...

- e

What I'm deeply interested in can be deemed quixotic, as in Don Quixote--who tended to be scorned and mocked for his chivalry. (If you doubt this, look up dictionary definitions for quixotic, such as: "foolishly impractical especially in the pursuit of ideals.") However, I did read a paragraph recently that called to me: "Don Quixote holds a good-hearted vision of the world as a noble place, and so strong is this vision that by the end of the novel, it has in some mysterious way transformed his material surroundings." Exactly.

Brian Clark in an interview with Andrea Phillips says, ""Artistically, I like to believe that we have the opportunity to create a sense of wonder about the world around us, to wake people up from the plodding through life with a little moment that can start to open the doors of perception and unlock a sense of power to remake the world the way you want it to be. For at least the last decade, much of my work at least incorporates elements of this ideal of "reality hacking".... "

"They can be like the sun, words.
They can do for the heart what light can for a field.” - The Poems of St. John of the Cross

"All of this is the expression of the One--you don't have to hide from it." - Adyashanti, as captured in my notes August 26, 2012 in Palo Alto

{Below a video of: John Cage's Music of Changes}

 

I recently reading a moving part (the rest of the book isn't as personal albeit it's great too and I highly recommend it if you're interested in the subject, yet the personal story is why I resonated with this section) in A Creator's Guide to Transmedia Storytelling by Andrea Phillips about how she found herself suddenly unemployed in December 2007. 

"And as much as I was desperate to do paying work, I was equally hungry to do fulfilling work. Perplex City had been three years of incredible creative collaboration with an exceptional team, and it was gone, gone, gone. I was lonely and unproductive. I was terrified that my career as a creator had ground to a halt and would never move forward again. I was waiting for a break. Waiting for an offer. Waiting for someone to notice me and tell me what to do next. And waiting, and waiting, and waiting. 

And then I started talking to my old friend and fellow Cloudmaker Jay Bushman. He had recently launched a Twitter adaptation of a Herman Melville story called The Good Captain. Every day for three months, The Good Captain spun out a few short sentences of the tale of a drifting spaceship and the robot mutiny that had led to the ship's dire situation.

I found myself profoundly jealous of Bushman's ability to create and promote something so interesting when it wasn't his job and he had no funding. What did he have that I didn't?

The answer, of course, was nothing at all. Nothing but the sheer drive to create, that is.

This ignited the spark in me that had been missing: the passion to just make something with whatever resources I had on hand. Since I was so dead broke, those resources amounted to my brain, my fingers to type with, the computer I already owned, and the Internet connection I was already paying for.

[Andrea explains some projects she created using free resources like Twitter, Google Calendar (for time travel, of course) and a Wiki fiction experiment.] 

. . . A curious correlation arose. the more indie stuff I made, the more paying work I got, too, and on an amazing array of projects. Why? There are a lot of people who talk about transmedia. It turns out that there are precious few who are actually tring to make something with what they have right now.

. . . And it's nothing special about me: you can do it, too. Just prove that you have the ambition to create, no matter what your situation. That puts you at a decided advantage. 

So my biggest, most important lesson is this: you can't wait for permission or funding or a contract or a job. Once you get this--and I mean really, really get this--you and your career will be transformed. You will be liberated. Don't hang around hoping that somebody specifically asks you to make something. Find something to get excited about, and then, as the Nike ads go, Just Do It." - Andrea Phillips, A Creator's Guide to Transmedia Storytelling

I too find fear disguises itself as "waiting for not right now" as somehow some other point might be the right time, right opportunity, right job, right place, right teammates, right funding, right attitude--yada yada. I recall opening a book this past spring where an interviewer asked Bob Dylan for the secret to his success. He replied, "I was doing what I could with what I had where I was."

Art Credits: Get Excited and Make Things (Creative Commons-licensed) poster by Matt Jones.

This is a world liberated from adult judgments and expectations, and campers flourish in it

I've been carrying around a brochure for Steve & Kate's summer camps for a few weeks now in my purse. I'm not in their target audience, yet it spoke to me loud and clear:

"At Steve & Kate's, campers step into a world packed with possibilities: for experiencing new sensations, for expressing themselves, for exploring their unique passions and potential. The results are unexpected, and they're unexpectedly rich.

One camper dives deep into digital filmmaking. Another discovers a passion for dance. Or chess. A camper becomes engrossed in making the ultimate spaghetti sauce. Or developing Leo Messi-like touch on the soccer pitch. These discoveries are all the more exhilarating because campers make them for themselves.

This is a world liberated from adult judgments and expectations, and campers flourish in it."

Even more enchanting: "Our camp conforms to kids, not the other way around."

“Idle dreaming is often of the essence of what we do,” wrote Thomas Pynchon in his essay on sloth. Archimedes’ “Eureka” in the bath, Newton’s apple, Jekyll & Hyde and the benzene ring: history is full of stories of inspirations that come in idle moments and dreams. It almost makes you wonder whether loafers, goldbricks and no-accounts aren’t responsible for more of the world’s great ideas, inventions and masterpieces than the hardworking.

“The goal of the future is full unemployment, so we can play. That’s why we have to destroy the present politico-economic system.” This may sound like the pronouncement of some bong-smoking anarchist, but it was actually Arthur C. Clarke, who found time between scuba diving and pinball games to write “Childhood’s End” and think up communications satellites. - "The Busy Trap," by Tim Kreider, New York Times, June 30, 2012

I would love to start a 'camp' (ideally, both virtual and physical), although I've been wavering on the precise spelling out of this all-ages camp (more accurately ages 13 to 185) geared to the child-like wonder and inspiration in each of us.

One of the most touching details in Vermeer's oeuvre is that of the two children absorbed in their play in the Little Street. Although they occupy a small portion of the painting, the magical atmosphere that pervades the work would be deprived of much of its intimate warmth without their presence. As is befitting of Vermeer's enigmatic nature, neither the children's faces nor their play is revealed. - an overview of The Little Street by Vemeer

And I need to reveal my own voice before I go forth to harmonize with others. (I'd already recovered my voice circa 2006, in one sense, I just wasn't belting it out in public. In other nomenclature, it's often termed hiding your light under a bushel.) Lately I have shielded myself from writing, sharing, interacting, speaking publically because I don't conform, and agreement seems like an unquestionable virtue in this culture. But it's not among my virtues.

My highest ideal is to interact with a diversity of people with mutual respect, without any of us needing to convert anyone else away from who they are or judge another's choices. I don't claim this an ideal for the entire world, as that feels imposing. It's my own desire within my play-sphere of humans and other beings.

To that end, I started to jot physical camp ideas here (there's a real-live-tangible-awesome-face-to-face space available for lease in Santa Clara/San Jose right now).

And, I started to write out things I'm afraid to tell other people in a long list in order to get over myself and emancipate my voice. Here's a few things that relate to multiplicity and voice in that list. (The rest of list won't be blogged, rather posted as a FAQ or within the About page):

I wish for multiplicity. Don't be like me, please! No mimicry, no conformity. To that end, I have been quite inspired lately by learning more of my ancestral heritage, and researching the Golden Age of Al-Andalus in medieval Spain. It was quite possible a very vibrant and fertile time period of multiplicity where many types of people of different worldviews crossed paths and co-existed. Ancient Greek texts were translated to Hebrew and Arabic and Latin, and delicately doted over in universities and libraries. Poetry and singing flourished alongside with pomegranate fruit and olive oil trade. Not my highest ideal, but nonetheless a shining example during what is commonly referred to as The Dark Ages.

I don't know. My standard answer when people ask me about the future, especially "my" future. It tends to infuriate people. At that point, I might make up an answer but it's only to soothe them, not because I actually know. 

I have friends and acquaintances from all nationalities. Some are transients (no I.D. like Christopher McCandless in Into the Wild), Republicans, anarchists, Libertarians, theists, atheists, academics, circus performers, nomads, homebodies, vegans, hunters, crafters, bicycle riders, SUV drivers, saunterers, pilgrims, hitchhikers, train-hoppers, children, elders, shamans, Catholic priests, real estate brokers, dancers, hat-makers, scientists, tantrikas, athletes, artists, monks, hostel owners, strip-tease dancers, drug dealers, homeschoolers, educators, poets, startup CEOs, millionaire venture capitalists, homeless veterans, policemen. I usually don't mention this because not all these people would necessarily want to meet the so-called 'other', but that doesn't preclude me from finding value in them for myself. Apologies if my giving credence to another offends you or this indicates that I am now not worthy of belonging to a tribe. I don't understand all this Other'ing and category labels as exclusionary devices, yet I understand that it happens.

ART CREDITS: The Obliteration Room, envisioned by Yayoi Kusama was a participartory installation at the Queensland Gallery of Modern Art. It is aptly summarized by, "This is what happens when you give thousands of stickers to thousands of kids."

First photo and fourth photo by GoMA photographer Mark Sherwood; photos two and three of The Obliteration Room is from This is Colossal blog; last photo of The Obliteration Room by Daniela Sunde-Brown.

When's the Last Time You Tried to Pay the Rent with Love?

I'm reposting an oldie but goodie today that evokes Independence, at least in my mind. It was originally written on June 28, 2005--nearly seven years ago today.

I'm back in San Jose, CA at least for the moment, where this was once written. Barefoot Coffee Roasters is no longer as edgy and independent as it once was, and there's no longer a chalkboard in their bathroom. The Beatles reference, "All you need is love," turned out to be prophetic (you'd have to read several posts to follow the connections). And how the rest of the story unfolded will wait for a future post.

Jun 28, 2005

When's the Last Time You Tried to Pay the Rent with Love?

There is only one success - to be able to spend the rest of your life in your own way. - Christopher Morley

Two weeks ago I'm sitting at a stool writing my bio at Barefoot Coffee Roasters (a fantastic organic coffeehouse in Santa Clara, CA). I'm supposed to come up with a witty list of bullet points per request to sum up my education, work and adventures. I get up to go to the bathroom mainly to stretch from the hours spent in front of the laptop. I'd been staring at the screen stumped as to how to succinctly articulate that rollercoaster adventure that spanned the years 2001-2004.

The bottom half of the bathroom wall is entirely wrapped in chalkboard. And there's a plastic tub with colored chalk to tempt our expressive side. Someone else has written in baby blue:

All You Need is Love -  John Lennon

A dissenter responds in pink pastel:

Yes, thank you. We've all heard the song. When's the last time you tried to pay the rent with love?

That my friends pretty much sums up the core question in my life today. I use it as an open-ended question to dwelve into rather than an abrupt and cynical that's-just-the-way-it-is-folks statement.

I know, I know I said I'd come clean with my story. That's not entirely possible in the attention-deficit blogosphere. Only a sneak peek fits here. It doesn't help that I'm not entirely motivated to speak about the past. The beauty and freedom of blogging is writing about the here and now in the here and now.

Yet I thought you should know that although this here blog is often listed in the business blog category, I personally know almost nothing about conventional quote success unquote. I've only been a millionaire on paper. Heck, haven't we all been millionaires on paper, in our imaginations? If you resonate with Chris Morley's definition, well, then perhaps I can be more helpful.

Think of me as a fellow patient in the same hospital who, having been admitted a little earlier, could give some advice. - C.S. Lewis

In many ways, my story isn't unique. I've met so many folks that have gone through a near-bankruptcy, the dot-com crash, business betrayal, and divorce. It matters little if it was all in a span of a year or three or ten.

From there, each of us goes down our own pathway. I think what's important is not so much the turning points themselves, but the aftermath. How we learn, digest, integrate, rebuild in that in-between time to use the lessons and wake-up calls fruitfully. Along with my father's death at seventeen and more recently witnessing the tsunami, the avalanche of events circa 2001-2002 have been among the turning points of my life.

In hindsight I was fortunate enough to have so much go so wrong in short order that I couldn't pretend that I knew anything about anything. The Buddha has said: Forgo everything you have thought significant until now. (Uh, easier said than done.) I was stripped of everything I thought significant and I was stripped of being a know-it-all. I was hungry for answers, and this time simply stark questions remained. That in itself was a remarkable turning point: Evelyn didn't know.

Ask and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you: for everyone that asketh receiveth, and he that seeketh findeth, and to them that knock it shall be opened. - Jesus, The Sermon on the Mount

(Note: that I can even quote Jesus in public forgodsakes shows the great strides I've made. This would have been unthinkable - what would they think!? - just two years ago.)

Let's switch to another story... Don Listwin was No. 2 at Cisco when he left to become CEO of Openwave in September 2000. (Talk about bad timing. Uh, strike that, it did allow Listwin to cash out all his Cisco stock options.)

Yet the Internet bubble had already begun to burst, and [Don] Listwin says  the four years he spent as CEO turned out to be the hardest of his life. "I had to lay off half my 2,500 employees. I got divorced. And my mom died." Listwin says....

He was at the hospital, near Vancouver, where his mom had died less than an hour earlier. His father and sister had just arrived, and the mourning process had begun in earnest. Just as a nurse came into the room and asked if the family would like to donate Grace Listwin's corneas, Listwin's mobile phone rang. It was Openwave's CFO, reporting in that they had missed their numbers for the quarter. "Thanks for telling me, but at the moment that's just going to have to take a back seat." - "When the Dream Changes", Paul B. Carroll, Worthwhile Magazine, July/August 2005

I'd been the first employee of a golden-boy-founded Internet start-up. That same September 2000 that Listwin joined Openwave we tried to get a second round of funding. I can only picture the men gathered around the board room as our iconic venture capitalist yelled and stomped when he uncovered that said golden boy, now chairman of the board, was merely working part-time. Everything quickly unraveled.

Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. - Steve Jobs

Listwin walked away from Openwave and now devotes his life to fighting cancer at his non-profit. (Listwin's mission is focused on the crux of the cancer problem because "money is being made from treatment, not from detection.") I only use Listwin as a counterpoint to myself. It really doesn't matter: you can be a multi-millionaire in a velvet-lined prison cell of your own making or you can be a nomadic gypsy tossed from port to port, freedom and security is totally independent of your bank account.

Money isn't evil. It is nothing. - Anonymous

As catchwords that pull me forward, authenticity, purpose and integrity were the drivers that fueled my personal quest. These catchwords guided me quite well for the last few years. They fueled my curiousity. The funny thing was I practically ended up right where I'd started, or at least it looks that way externally.

 

We shall not cease from exploration 
And the end of all our exploring 
Will be to arrive where we started 
And know the place for the first time.- T.S. Eliot

I watched many of my compatriots (especially women) leave behind technology and business to heal the world and escape to be 'more authentic': from joining non-profit ventures to becoming Reiki masters to listening deeply as a personal coach. It would require a book-length post to chronicle my journey - so I'll cut to the chase. I got to the point where I realized I didn't need to go anywhere to be myself. I didn't need to go anywhere to heal. Trust me, there's a whole lot of healing needed right here within business.

The old catchphrases have lost their mystery. Ever since the tsunami, I have new catchphrases: open-heartedness, selflessness, and grace. These catchwords are proverbial carrots at the end of the stick - pretty distant but compelling. Yet, they are on the very same authenticity continuum that I embarked in 2002.

Ultimately authenticity is interwined with fearlessness. You can read Steve Job's 2005 Stanford commencement speech. It's remarkably inspiring. Four days later, one can easily be back to reading the weekly status report and glumly punching the clock. I know this. Verywell. Your fear, your doubt, your resistance, your homeostatis andyour obstacles aren't specifically addressed in Job's speech, are they?

Inspiration doesn't pay the bills. We dismiss millionaires like Jobs and Listwin. Yeah, right, what do they know about fear and failure, we mumble. Fine, then (although they're ultimately flesh and bones - andspirit - too).

I grew up in an immigrant family, so 'Do what you love and the money will follow' was hardly my parent's life-long advice. To top it off, they were so overprotective and fearful of outsiders that riding my bicycle around the block, going over to a friend's home, having a boyfriend, and certainly the school trip to D.C. were strictly forbidden.

In a parallel universe I would have been an English lit and philosophy major, but even a journalism degree was too risky. In my first semester as a copy editor of the university paper, I quickly saw that seniors were having a tough time securing ill-paying reporting jobs. Needless to say, I graduated with a BSEE. (Actually, I love the art of computers too, but in my heart of hearts it's not my first love.)

Recently, at a journalism conference an Indian-Japanese comedian is introduced thusly,  "Like all good Indians and all good Japanese, he became an engineer."  This is so true it hurts like a Dilbert cartoon. His humorous quips as Andy Groves' demo boy eventually paved the way to his new career. The Indian journalists foremost question to him: "What did your parents say?" I'm scratching the surface, but this is the firm foundation I then laid my own heap of fears upon.

"So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time," is plain as day in Jobs' pep talk. He continues:

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. - Steve Jobs

In 2002-2003, I bounced around the Bay Area sleeping on friend's couches (no floors, so I am one up on Jobs ;-)) and there were days I could barely afford peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for dinner. After one consulting engagement in Europe (after a long dry spell, and expenses were only reimbursed later), I wandered alone through Italian cobblestone streets teeming with cafes and shops hoping I could find something to eat with the change in my pocket. It amounted to less than a euro. Although I went hungry that one day, I gorged myself on the morning flight back to the U.S. on business class.

But as I've said before, the summer of 2002 was priceless. All the money I'd hoarded during my lucrative engineering days had never granted me a lasting sense of peace and joy and freedom. With nowhere further to fall, I gleaned what intuition actually was and followed it; I experienced the expansiveness of impersonal unconditional love - a love that emanates from the universe; and I was experimented with what freedom without strings attached might look like. It was that indescribable love that I trusted. It was an imperfect often halting trust, but it got me by. In an about face to the controlled will and rationality that had shaped my life, I simply trusted that it would (ok, how's might even) all work out OK.

You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life. - Steve Jobs

What motivates me now? You will think me absurd for saying this in the same breath as the word business - and perhaps you've already surmised it: Yup, I am definitely hinting about enlightenment as the endpoint on the authenticity continuum.

We could regard enlightenment as the complete experience of fearlessness. – Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, Shambhala Sun, March 2005

Enlightenment: that's my carrot catchword these days. Althoughenlightenment feels nebulous. It's more concrete when I translate it and contemplate opening my heart and living in grace.

As I write, I feel more absurd. The concept sounds absurd. Enlightenment? Hello, it's 2005. I work for a living. And I am attempting enlightenment in the most (or one of the most) materialistic regions in the most materialistic country while employed in a materialisitic profession. What gall!

According to Buddhist teachings, the buddha-nature is present in every living being, and the natural state of one's mind, when it's not misconstrued by the power of negative thoughts, is perfection. - Matthieu Ricard

They say Matthieu Ricard, the son of a French intellectual, "gave up a promising career as a scientist to study Tibetan Buddhism." Uh, what exactly is this promise behind a promising career, anyway? Does it have any relations in the family of happiness?

At a 2003 conference at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Richard Davidson, a neuroscientist at the University of Wisconsin who oversaw the experiments there, described his follow-up studies. Davidson, who had spent time in Asia studying meditation when he was younger, flashed a PowerPoint slide of a bell curve rising like a red mountain out of a flat landscape. It was a graph, he explained, charting 150 people's normal brain states. For the great majority, that state was a mix of left prefrontal cortex (positive emotion) and right prefrontal cortex (negative emotion) activity. But there was one tiny "data point" at the chart's far edge, a solitary pilgrim walking away from the looming red peak of statistical normalcy. That point was Matthieu Ricard,scanned during his compassion meditation. His reading was entirely off the curve in the area of positive emotion -- the most extreme result ever recorded. - "Scanning the Monk",Marc Ian Barasch, Utne Reader, March/April 2005

For extreme results of happiness and compassion, I'd go back immediately and wipe the tad-less-than-positive absurd from my vocabulary.

The eighty-four adepts, or mahasiddhas, who lived in India in the second to twelfth centuries found it necessary do spiritual practice in conjunction with their worldly activities. For instance, King Indrabhuti ruled a large kingdom and was surrounded by great luxury. Yet he received mahamudra [Buddhist] instructions, practiced them while ruling his Kingdom, and achieved the supreme accomplishment of mahamudra - enlightenment in one lifetime. Other mahasiddhas were cobblers, arrow makers, sweepers, and even practitioners of such humble occupations as grinding sesame seeds...There was for them no contradiction between the work that they had to do and the practice of mahamudra; no conflict came up between Dharma [application of Buddha's teaching] practice and worldly activities. - Essentials of Mahamudra: Looking Directly at the Mind, by Khenchen Thranga Rinpoche

What motivates me? Today, Mother Theresa's words spur me too: "Do not wait for leaders; do it alone, person to person." And I continue to ask myself: When's the last time you tried to pay the rent with love?

Love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whoever loves much, performs much, and can accomplish much, and that which is done in love is well done. - Vincent van Gogh

Now ask yourself: When's the last time you tried to paid the rent with love?

ART CREDITS: "Palestinian children stand to form Pablo Picasso’s [lithograph] Dove of Peace as part of a project by British aerial artist John Quigley." via Ryan Donato. 

it's a jungle out there... and the ecosystems they co-create

"There is an almost sensual longing for communion with others who have a larger vision. The immense fulfillment of the friendships between those engaged in furthering the evolution of consciousness has a quality almost impossible to describe ..." - Teilhard de Chardin

On a visit to Indiana in April, witnessing the bloom of purple allium and the elm trees through the window, I happened upon a New York Times op-ed piece that became the stepping-stone to why I returned to engage with the San Francisco Bay Area ecosystem, again:

"When [Peter] Thiel is talking about a “monopoly,” he isn’t talking about the illegal eliminate-your-rivals kind. He’s talking about doing something so creative that you establish a distinct market, niche and identity. . . 

His lecture points to a provocative possibility: that the competitive spirit capitalism engenders can sometimes inhibit the creativity it requires.

Think about the traits that creative people possess. Creative people don’t follow the crowds; they seek out the blank spots on the map. Creative people wander through faraway and forgotten traditions and then integrate marginal perspectives back to the mainstream. Instead of being fastest around the tracks everybody knows, creative people move adaptively through wildernesses nobody knows." - "The Creative Monopoly," New York Times, April 23, 2012

Today via Fred Wilson's blog, I was acquainted with Sep Kamvar, a professor at MIT Media Lab with an artistic sensibility, who wrote an essay on the principle of cyclicity. Cyclicity is another phrase for the ineffable philosophy I keep being drawn towards. Last week the closest phrase I could come up with was "generative ecosystem." And it's the generative and regenerative ecosystem aspect of Silicon Valley that drew me here, even though in other respects I feel like an odd man out. Sure, it's not in everyone's DNA, but it is here.

I'm on my laptop at Coupa Cafe, with its rustic, earthy beauty redolent of Latin America--high ceilings, hexagons in skylights, thick stone floors inlaid with colored mosaic, walls the color of blood oranges--and I read about the 26-year-old co-owner of Coupa Cafe, Jean Paul Coupal:

"[He] didn’t quite expect the Palo Alto cafe to become such a tech magnet. But he has encouraged it, adding a zippy 50 megabit WiFi network and encouraging people to camp out with their laptops. Since the beginning we wanted it to be a place where you aren’t kicked out,” Coupal says. “At a restaurant, they bring you the check and you feel you have to leave. We didn’t want that. We wanted people to feel at home.”"

From last week to this week I notice a new item, handcrafted* toffee, displayed at the counter (I'd spotted "Toffee Talk" at the downtown San Jose Farmer's Market the previous Friday and the samples I enjoyed were luscious). Coupal gives newly-seeded projects and ideas a chance to take root:

"There are many people and institutions in Silicon Valley willing to help new startups, including incubators, universities, angels, venture capital firms and big tech companies. But local small businesses like Coupa that are willing to give new startups a shot are  another important part of this ecosystem." - "Coupa Cafe: Where Start-ups Meet, Work, and Test Products," Forbes, December 5, 2011

As I type this, a man to my left interrupts my absorption in blog-writing to ask if there are any extra power outlets by me.

At first I say, "No, there's not," since it is true.

Then, I find myself double-checking my laptop battery. It's at 100%, so I offer him the power outlet I'd been using as his laptop is drained. It doesn't always work out this way, yet it's not usual for the ones who thrive. We tend to think of 'power places' like NYC and Silicon Valley as spots that abide by the law of the jungle--it's either you or me, we must take from and be predatory for our mere survival--yet do jungles actually thrive through cut-throat means? Tachi Kiuchi and Bill Shireman, in, What We Learned in the Rainforest: Business Lessons from Nature, say:

"Rainforest species are not solitary organisms fighting myriad others to be the last to survive in a hostile environment. They all depend on each other to collectively build an ecosystem, each defining an exclusive niche vital to and dependent on the other niches that border and overlap it.

...the most valuable resources of the rainforest [are] not the trees or other physical resources, but the relationships, the complex array of [symbiotic] designs [among the species.] 

"This cooperation is not conscious, as human cooperation sometimes is; it is a consequence of specialization and interdependency. As they specialize, living things find it to their advantage to cooperate. Whether they like it or not the parts come together, in cooperation, as wholes.

Ecosystems are not isolated entities with impenetrable borders. Every ecosystem is nested within, borders on, or overlaps with other systems.

A verge is a rich mixture of ecosystems that happens where two distinct forms meet with each other and begin to intermix. Verges are places of conflict, but also of positive change. They bring together diverse systems and set the stage either for their integration or for their destruction.

Our economy, too, is on a verge. " 

Even after The Creative Monopoly op-ed instigated pondering a move, I wasn't certain (I'd sworn I'd never return to Silicon Valley--primarily as it couldn't fulfill my desire to express myself beside the cerebral facet of myself). And it seemed absurd to risk returning to the Bay Area ecosystem on a drained battery (i.e. shoestring budget). A few days after The Creative Monopoly omen, Oakland, CA resident, publisher, and author of Starting Your Book and MotherWealth, Naomi Rose e-mails me:

"I just found you on the Internet in a way that I can only call "inspired." I have come to realize that, as a sole proprietor doing everything, I really do need help, and especially in the area of marketing. But when I looked online at marketing help, it was all the same old high-powered competitive-oriented thing. A lover of slowness (and working that way, with my clients and my books), I asked myself, "Could there be such a thing as 'slow marketing'?"

 

So I typed it in. When the term came up in Wikipedia, it cited you as the originator of the term. Then I went to your blog, read much of it, and found you."

That's what cinched it for me. Something I wrote in 2006, "Slow Food, Slow Sex, Slow Marketing" while I still lived in the Bay Area, spoke to someone else there. At the time of writing, I truly felt like an outlier (and it was only a matter of time before I left in January 2008 to find somewhere that my way of being might be welcomed as a contribution to the whole).

So I was particularly warmed and inspired today, to read, in full--"Cyclicity: Missions and Metrics" by Sep Kamvar (his and Jonathan Harris' entire essay series are worthwhile) which I include here: 

"There is an old Zen story about a man riding a horse, galloping frantically down a path. His friend, who is sitting by the side of the road, calls out "Where are you going?" The man replies: "I don't know. Ask the horse!"

When we build our tools, we often depend on metrics to guide our development. We keep graphs of unique visitors and pageviews and watch them closely. This keeps us honest. It's hard to convince anybody that we're building a useful tool if our metrics show that nobody is using it.

But we must take care when we use metrics. Metrics can be like the horse in the old Zen story. Once we decide on them, they have a habit of setting the agenda. As the old adage goes, what gets measured gets managed.

The standard metric for a country's economic welfare is GDP. I find this strange. If the government decided to give millions of dollars to the country's richest people so that they can buy yachts from one another, that would increase GDP. So would clearcutting our national forests to build strip malls, outsourcing the raising of our children, and incarcerating large swaths of our poor.

If we temper the language a bit, we might find that this description is not so far from reality.

My point is that metrics shape behavior. Joseph Stiglitz describes this mechanism nicely: "What we gather our information about, and how we describe success, affects what we strive for." Political leaders who want to grow the economy, he says, will focus policies on things that increase GDP, even when GDP does not correlate with societal well-being.

Which brings me to my second point: all metrics leave something out. Often, they leave the most important things out.

In 2007, Stanford offered a course called "CS377W: Creating Engaging Facebook Apps". The course assignment was to build a Facebook application that, according to the course website, would "focus on solving a problem for a broad audience." It was an intensively metrics-driven class, and the key metric was user numbers. By the metrics, the results were astonishing: in the course of the 10-week term, the apps collectively reached 16 million users.

The flipside was that the applications themselves were underwhelming. Most of them allowed users to do things like rank the attractiveness of their friends, send virtual hugs and have virtual pillow fights. The substance of the applications reflected what the metric left out. If it were possible to measure the value of a user's attention, or how enriching an application is to her life, the course projects would likely have been quite different. But sometimes, the important things can't be measured.

It is useful, therefore, to have missions to balance our metrics. Of course, each tool should have its own mission. But if I were to suggest one mission for all tools, it might be this:

Every tool should nourish the things upon which it depends.

We see this principle at varying levels in some of our tools today. I call them cyclical tools. The iPhone empowers the developer ecosystem that helps drive its adoption. A bike strengthens the person who pedals it. Open-source software educates its potential contributors. A hallmark of cyclical tools is that they create open loops: the bike strengthens its rider to do things other than just pedal the bike.

Cyclical tools are like trees, whose falling leaves fertilize the soil in which they grow.

At the top of the stack, all tools depend on nature and human nature. They depend on the sun, trees, minerals, and fossil fuels to provide their raw materials and energy. They depend on the creativity of builders to give them form. And they depend on the attention of their users, without which they would languish.

An ecosystem of cyclical tools would therefore nourish nature and empower people. A fully cyclical software application may, for example, use peer-to-peer data centers powered by its users, consisting of biodegradable, fertilizing microprocessors. It would be open-source and provide APIs to empower the creativity of builders, and a clean design and useful purpose that cultivates the concentration of its users.

If some of this sounds like science fiction, so did manned lunar vehicles in 1950, or self-driving cars in 2000. We have a tendency to achieve what we focus on.

It’s difficult to build cyclical tools because the alternative is so tempting. Cars are faster than bikes. FishVille reaches more people than Moby Dick. At first, cyclical tools appear to be lower-power, slower-growth, and more expensive than extractive tools.

But you can’t measure the impact of tools on their own. You must measure them by the ecosystems that they co-create."

* "Catherine is adamant that her toffee remain an artisanal, handmade confection and continues to prepare every batch herself." - Toffee Talk website

ART CREDITS: Henri Rousseau's The Dream, Exotic Landscape with Playing Monkeys, and Two Monkeys in the Jungle.

the future of us = wonder year(s) and experiments in imaginal science

"The Wonder Year project is an invitation to imagine what lies beyond the apparent boundary of 2012, not as a rigidy imposed concept or prediction, but as an adventure." - The Wonder Year

I adore invitations and adventure, so this The Wonder Year (via Spaziale blog) caught my eye today; I'm still investigating it for myself.

Two days ago, I conceived of a mini-adventure inspired by a book's premise that I'd like to share.

In The Future of Us, teenage protagonists Josh and Emma live in 1996, and find out that Emma's computer can mysteriously access Facebook fifteen years in the future. Facebook doesn't exist in linear time, yet inadvertently or not, they're reading their own future-self Facebook statuses. They begin to piece together a puzzle of their lives as grown-ups.

In 1996, taking the best educated guess I could at the time, I'd be starkly wrong about the ride into 2011 on almost every single front I'd hazard a guess.  Rather than 15 years fast-forward, even 10-year-sprees are daunting: I was pretty much the same person with same worldview in 1996 as in 1986 so extrapolation sort of works for that time span. But 2006? That was night-and-day from 1996.

Eight years and exactly one day ago today, I published my first post here at Crossroads Dispatches. (Previous blog lasted a few months.) Could I predict I'd still be writing right here same bat-channel eight years later?

I'm startled myself how skimming (I didn't read it through as it's more suited to YA) The Future of Us got me going on this theme about how we believe we can or ought to predict or shape destiny. Notions such as there is a singular optimum destiny and we must finagle to get there. Or fearsome other destinies we must avoid. It opens up a ball of wax to play with.

I just didn't know what I didn't know back then, and actually couldn't conceive of many of the events and insights that have occurred (and I've left out a lot of juicy, weird parts). Mind and spirit may not be static. Maybe we aren't confined by our 17-year-old beliefs, or even yesterdays'.

"Many times I imagined myself here--at the threshold of the palace. But I always thought I would be here as a conqueror, instead we are the Earth king's personal guests here to serve him tea. Destiny is a funny thing." - unnamed character in Avatar: The Last Airbender

Destiny is a funny thing.

"Now, we have to do something. It doesn't have to be huge, but something we weren't going to do before playing this game."

"Emma, I'm not messing with the future. Not as part of a game."

"Then don't call it a game!" she snaps. "Think of it as an award-winning science experiment."

Emma picks up the thin blue vase from her dresser. Earlier this week, it held the dying roses Graham gave her for prom. Emma slowly tips the vase until water begins dribbling onto her white carpet.

"What are you doing?" I ask. But I know the answer. She's making a small change in the present to see how it affects the future. If I grab the vase from her now, it wouldn't matter because that wouldn't have happened before either. - The Future of Us, by Jay Asher and Carolyn Macker

In the book, Emma and Josh started to notice that things they'd decide in the present would ripple into the future each time they hit refresh on Facebook--sometimes affecting the name of their spouse,  the town where they reside, who's on their Friends list and who isn't and other factors.

The Invitation and Adventure. Try on this experiment in imaginal science. Less manipulating the future, more an exercise in imagination, at least for me--but play it as you will.

What did you do today that rippled into the future? As Emma notes, "It doesn't have to be huge, but something we weren't going to do before playing this game."

I like the ring of "hindsight is 20/20" so I'm setting my future statuses for the year 2020. Oh, and I'm not necessarily going to stay within the realm of "the feasible."

Add yours in Comments section below if you want to play too. (You can also invent the present-day statuses, if you like.) I'll play for about 10 or 11 days through February 19th--adding my statuses to the Comments. In a few days, I'll add yet another twist to the game inspired from the book, The Future of Us. Here's an example:

Yesterday: For the past year, nearly every day I walk 1 and 1/2 hours in pretty much the southerly direction in the same neighborhood. Today I walked a new northern route (I'd explored pieces of it years ago; today, I went further). And found a biking trail I didn't know about. It gave me a vantage point to see palatial 'star' homes that are often obscured by gates and walls.

In 2020: Jaunt through forests near Mogollon Rim. Built a fire for the evening. I'll travel again at dawn. (The unspoken, implied part is totally comfortable with wilderness survival in winter.) Photo attached with status update: Mongollan Rim and the Verde River.

ART CREDITS: Illustration by Katsuhiro Otomo via darksilenceinsuburbia; Bâtiment (Building) Installation, by Leandro Erlich, grants super-powers to passersby -- scale a building in Paris through March (a vertical mirror reflects a horizontal building facade) via MyModernMet.

game-changing, or how to turn economic recovery into a multi-player game experience

"Game-changing."

You hear that term bandied about in innovation circles. In application, it isn't that frequent as "game-changer" implies something that leapfrogs one out of the lock of a current system, institution, industry, regime, paradigm and defines its own brand-new game. 

I hadn't connected the dots with the synchronicity of hints and winks that life is a grand "game" until recently.

I sat down to eat lunch the other day, and absentmindly (well, could almost replace instinctually or spontaneously with "absentmindedly") pick up the top magazine in my Mom's pile to browse through for eye-candy. (Not typical for me; if I am going to read while eating it would be the Internet.)

I open up her recent Elle to the story of Jane McGonigal. The article profiles her life and her purpose: fleshing out her childhood joy into a profession, announcing her new game company, showing how she got into real-world gaming (differs from video games in that it interleaves real-world issues and real-life experiences with game mechanics), and the head injury that instigated her latest game: one that helped her regain her joie de vivre and her health.

So I thought: what if we were to repurpose Jane's concept of "how to turn recovery into a multi-player experience" into "how to turn economic recovery into a multi-player experience?" And I don't mean recovery as in return to the past or status quo. Perhaps dynamically better than yesterday: I like what Umair Haque says here about the classic Greek principle of eudaimonia: "Eudaimonic prosperity, in contrast, is about mastering a new set of habits: igniting the art of living meaningfully well. An active conception of prosperity, it's concerned not with what one has, but what one is capable of."

I'd been thinking that economics and money touches just about everyone's life--okay, nix that for fairies, elves and dragons. But humans are fairly enthralled (dare I say, seduced) by this whole game of exchange of gifts that includes bits of colored paper and tinkling coinage.

"You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete." - Bucky Fuller

Backtrack a bit to May 2009, I was working on a grant proposal that tied into New Orleans' "Creative Recovery." (For context, "Creative Recovery" grants were through Transforma Projects mini-grants: "The Creative Recovery Mini-Grant program supported work produced at the intersection of art, social justice, and recovery in New Orleans. It fueled the recovery process with the energy of the local creative community by supporting the vibrant activity on the ground level.")

I realized after I'd dreamed it and written it up (then, reading the fine print) that I disqualified for applying for the grant as I was no longer a permanent resident (however, I was in New Orleans at the time). The seed of the idea kept tugging at me, so I wrote it up as a real-world game concept in February 2011. Here's the original Kickstarter project proposal here (unfunded); although, the concept has evolved considerably.

"The "next Google" is unlikely to be a search engine, however, just as the "next Microsoft" was not a desktop software company. I used competing directly with Google as an example of a problem with maximum difficulty, not maximum payoff. Maximum payoff is more likely to come from making Google irrelevant than from replacing it. How exactly? I have no more than vague ideas about that. I wouldn't expect to be able to figure out the right answer, just as I wouldn't have expected anyone to figure out in 1990 what would make Microsoft irrelevant. " - Paul Graham, entrepreneur, angel investor, and founder of the tech start-up incubator and education program, Y Combinator

At this point in my musing, I'm reacquainted with an old blogging buddy in his private Google+ circle last week, and he linked to the article below. (Worth reading the whole she-bang for context and inspiration.) My friend asks his circle how we might use Google+ to correspond with each other and take action towards life-enhancing visions of the world (or what I also call a Renaissance). That's when things get intriguing...

The article my Google+ buddy shared to kick off the private circle discussion:

"Put what, why, and who you love ahead of what, why, and who you don't, and your roadmap will begin to write itself.

Now, my little principle might cause those with hand-made suits and beancounterly tendencies to leap out of their chairs and hit me with the tarantallegra jinx. But even the cynics might be willing to admit: given a mysteriously non-recovering "recovery" for a global economy perpetually poised on the brink of perma-crisis, the status quo's out of ideas, out of options, and running out of time.

In an economy dedicated to the pursuit of more, bigger, faster, cheaper, nastier, the greatest hidden cost and unintended consequence is that something vital, enduring, resonant, and animating has gone missing from our lives — and it might just be the biggest thing: meaning in what we do, and why we're here." - Umair Haque, "A Roadmap to a Life that Matters," Harvard Business Review blog, July 13, 2011

I was surprised to see this article in the Harvard Business Review blog--it's a bit warm and fuzzy for HBR (at least the HBR that I recall from years ago)... although a great sign... sign... signal, design... as the article lays out a design intention as in William McDonough's mantra: "Design is the first signal of human intention."

Linked in the above post is Umair's post on eudaimonia, Greek philosophy of "a deeply fulfilled life", where Umair contrasts the trajectory we are on with what we may prefer to set into motion, into design. In my own blog (see purpose paragraph under the headline, Crossroads Dispatches), what he calls eudaimonia I've encapsulated as:

"A neo-renaissance, eco-epicurean savors, curates and shares slices from the surf's edge on the inspiration, imagination, the art of living, the living of art - and anything that screams Life."

"In short, I see an outcomes gap: a yawning chasm the size of the Grand Canyon between what our economy produces and what you might call a meaningfully well-lived life, what the ancient Greeks called eudaimonia.

The economy we have today will let you chow down on a supersize McBurger, check derivative prices on your latest smartphone, and drive your giant SUV down the block to buy a McMansion on hypercredit. It's a vision of the good life that I call (a tiny gnat standing on the shoulders of the great Amartya Sen) hedonic opulence. And it's a conception built in and for the industrial age: about having more. Now consider a different vision: maybe crafting a fine meal, to be accompanied by local, award-winning microbrewed beer your friends have brought over, and then walking back to the studio where you're designing a building whose goal is nothing less than rivaling the Sagrada Familia. That's an alternate vision, one I call eudaimonic prosperity, and it's about living meaningfully well. Its purpose is not merely passive, slack-jawed "consuming" but living: doing, achieving, fulfilling, becoming, inspiring, transcending, creating, accomplishing — all the stuff that matters the most.

. . . .  Though it harks back to antiquity, eudaimonia's a smarter, sharper, wiser, wholer, well, richer conception of prosperity. And deep down, while it might be hard to admit, I'd bet we all know that our current habits are leaving us — have left us — not merely financially and fiscally broken, but, if not intellectually, physically, emotionally, relationally, and spiritually empty, then, well, probably at least just a little bit unhealthy. Eudaimonic prosperity, in contrast, is about mastering a new set of habits: igniting the art of living meaningfully well. An active conception of prosperity, it's concerned not with what one has, but what one is capable of." - Umair Haque, " Is a Well-Lived Life Worth Living?," Harvard Business Review blog, May 12, 2011

So this is a backstory on the genesis of the game. I've a few ideas for an enchanting real-world game that'd be worthwhile for each of us individually--and widening the circle, collectively. I think the "economic" recovery is a matter of re-imagining our present and future as to what we would truly desire no holds barred, rather than constantly extrapolating scenarios of the past onto the future.

To tie this in all together to the present day, Google+ could be an effective way to communicate with our "allies" (i.e. us) on a near-daily basis to play a game I'm formulating. (I'll admit this is much simpler if you already use Gmail as your hub, as I do, then it's integrated into your Internet experience.)

Allies is the multi-player aspect of the Super Better game that Jane used day to day to recover from her injury and post-concussion syndrome; so it is not a game of solitaire ;)

Please let me know if you need an invite to Google+ by August 1st (I may not check comments at this post later).

   

The economic thriving game is unfurling in a baby step next week. [Above is Derek Sivers' video "Start Now. No Funding Needed." Derek founded CDBaby in 1997.]

If you have game suggestions, or other suggestions, please let me know in comments or over at Google+. And, please note, if you go over to check Google+ out, you are viewing the public posts. The way Google+ works is you have to be in my circle to view the super secret ones ;).

p.s. Jane McGonigal's new company, Social Chocolate, initially starts an online verson of her Super Better concept game that she used to recover from her own head injury; she's extended the game for any type of injury and/or illness (yet to be released, forthcoming). I've been thinking of what game-changing means in terms of healthcare and other fields too--but that's another story.

p.p.s. I'm well aware of the "this is a first-world problem" argument. We start where we are ourselves and branch out inclusively from there; it's not advocacy on public policy. This engages people to people. The game is meant to be something you can personally participate in.

ART CREDITS: Cy Twombly's Camino Real; iron hoop trundling was popular in the 1960s and 1970s in China; hoop trundling boys circa 1830 in New York City via Funny Emails; an American Indian hoop game via Buffalo Post.

You were born with wings. Why prefer to crawl through life? - Rumi

"It is far more delightful to be fond of the world because it has thousands of aspects and is different everywhere. . .  for every divergence deserves to be cherished, simply because it widens the bounds of life." - Karel Capek

Are there times you're just not riveted by your desires and visions? Can't do anything to prop them up to be enjoyable to play out? There are certainly lots of reasons for that, including existential. Also it's easy to get caught up in cultural spells of what we should do, want, have, be so that the vision isn't even ours, so we can't truly align with it.

For me, I have had to keep expanding any vision that pops into my mind into ever-widening circles to be more inclusive and more encompassing of the world-at-large until it was compelling and adventurous enough to intice me. Otherwise, I'm just fine sipping lemonade on the porch.

Row row row your boat gently down the stream... merrily merrily merrily, merrily, life is but a dream.

Two days ago I read Joe Vitale's blog where he said someone offered to invest in any of his encompassing ideas, “If you can put people to work, turn water into fuel, or anything else that’s considered humanitarian on a grand scale, they can make it happen.” Joe continues in his post:

My mind recalled all the wild ideas I’ve ever had. I ran one or two by my lunch partner.

“That’s not big enough,” he said.  - Joe Vitale, Lunch With God

That's how I talk myself out of my own ideas lately. "That's not big enough." And I mean talk myself out of in the best possible way as it behooves me to be devoted to an idea that's compelling.

(Guess what, I learned that words compassion and encompass have similar etymological roots.)

I'm currently car-free in a city (Las Vegas) that doesn't really make it easy in 107+ degree sunny weather to tool around. On my private blog, I'd been playing a game where I receive an imaginary check each day (the amount increases by $1000 each day) and I have to put it into play right away (no hoarding). Although, I've quit said game and approach it now from "What project do I want to do next?" assuming "money is no object."

For the first week, I used the money to do projects--perhaps a public art installation, or arrange a Hunch Hub retreat or Salon with other folks. As I've already said, I enjoy producing things much much more than consuming things. I find that if I think about paying the rent, or buying a croissant in a cafe, or getting an iPhone and much of the desires I'm advertised to suppose to have--that they fairly boring to me. But if I think broadly "bigger than me," it gets interesting again.

Day 8 into the game, muse: "I really ought to get a car." Although in my heart of hearts I'm not THAT excited about a car.

Why is that? I ask myself. Why don't I want a car? Why do I want a car? I kept on with Why questions in my head. Even that exercise barely helped... sure, I want mobility to have the freedom to go from A to B, true. That wasn't juicy enough, and I can't fake enthusiasm.

This is what I wrote down (slightly edited) in a private blog post:

Going to settle for a VW Beetle, or something practical like an FJ-Cruiser--too bored to even pretend to want them. Rather, my mind keeps being flooded with blue or silver-blue convertibles, so I'm going with it.

So while searching for VW beetle photos... found this gem!--from a car forum: "is essentially a low-cost alternative to the Porsche Boxster."

"If all goes well and the [Volkswagen] BlueSport Roadster receives the final green light for production, the first cars could arrive at VW showrooms around late 2012."

Yeah, it's def more than $8000, but more checks will be arriving. This is my deposit ;)

Still.... I couldn't muster sustaining interest in any car--not even the all-electric Tesla, although at the same time I am in a city with dismal public transit, and a severe lack of sidewalks for pedestrians, etc. And did I mention how hot the asphalt gets in triple digit weather?

I thought about it and saw what I truly want is the about freedom of movement. Car being one of thousands of ways to achieve that end. That could be Zipcar combined with good city public transit, or so many other ways And also, I want to not only flourish myself, but have freedom of movement available to All.

Not so much impose my 'vision' on everyone but add options... something for everyone--walking, biking, anti-gravity propulsion capsules, flying saucers, rockets, flying, teleporting, bilocating, Zipcars, public transit--oh i love those Japanese bullet trains! More stuff like Eurorail (Amtrack, er, so-so). Then, there's that cool guy that runs the super-cheap $30 shuttles to LA from Vegas... more shuttles, limos, flying carpets, Segways, etc.

Monorails, light rails, people-movers, cablecars, gondolas, flying porpoises, Blimps, steampunk airships, hotair balloons, kite trios, caravans of camels, Mary Poppins umbrellas, whatever floats your boat... just get me/you/us from point A to B. Car is NOT the sole way.

Why not make those train cars more aesthetic, fun, spacious, maybe interactive theater with costumes for all to wear and make-believe in the cars?

Just read this tonight [at the time of writing] at bookstore on teleportation, and walking on water. Explains my vast respect for the East:

In 1894, Baird T. Spalding was on an expedition that he wrote up in a tome, Life and Teachings of the Masters of the Far East. They came to a swift river and many in the expedition party wanted to pay a visit to a neighbor on the other side. The stream was about "two thousand feet wide, running bank-full, and the current was at least ten miles per hour."

"When Jast [one of the guides] rejoined the group the twelve fully dressed, walked to the bank of the stream, and with the utmost composure stepped on the water, not into it... I held my breath, expecting, of course, to see them plunge beneath and disappear.... I think each of us held his breath, until they were all past midstream, so astonished were we to see these twelve men walking calmly across the surface of the stream... and not sinking below the soles of their sandals." - Spalding

Spalding was too afraid to try this himself although Jast and Neprow insisted he could do the same and be safe.Jast instead that none of the folks that crossed over were special. "They do not have one atom more power than you were created with." Spaulding also mentioned that he had witnessed Jast materialize and dematerialize his body at will and be at two places at once.

"How is it, a few are able to do the things we have seen accomplished, that all men cannot accomplish the same things? How is it that man is content to crawl, and not only content to crawl but is obliged to do so?" - Spalding

If my guide insists that I can walk across a raging river--no bridges, other the 'bridge' to spirit--just as gracefully as he, would I? Would you? Now, that, my friends is what I want. To expand our view of what is possible, and to walk the talk.

p.s, What is this beautiful old-school convertible? Found during my car search. Lovely (via Honestly WTF).

p.p.s. This post was originally posted in my private for-my-eyes-only blog, then re-edited for Encanto circle members. The me-only blog is basically a place to sift and discern what I want to create apart from the many voices in the fray and explore project ideas before they're fully crystallized.

ART CREDITS: Amy Sol "To You From My View" via Design Milk; flying hovercraft in comic The Storm by artist Donald Lawrence via fan-tas-tic.com; magic carpet painting/illustration unknown; 2004 Detroit peoplemover photo via DetroitYes!; photo of gondola navigating narrow street in Venice by MorBCN; Dokshum iron bridge in Bhutan, a 500-year-old chain link bridge built by Thangtong Gyalpo, a 15th century monk via OneWorld.net

Edmund Hilary was an ordinary beekeeper in Auckland, New Zealand, and other folks that didn't know how.

"In that wonderful story [Parsifal, Galahad and the Holy Grail myths], when any knight sees the trail of another, thinks he's getting there, and starts to follow the other's track, he goes astray entirely." - Joseph Campbell

I recently watched this video #1 that was sent to me via Sonia Ricotti's newsletter. It's worth watching (9 minutes).

Mind you, I already know the story of Edison, and the Wright Brothers, and the ascent of Everest pretty well. What I found intriguing was how Bob Proctor pointed out the fact that when they were in the midst of it, what they were attempting was not known. In fact, the refrain Bob repeated, "They didn't know how."

In the short six-minute video, Bob Proctor shows a slide of Edmund Hillary and Tenzay Norgay, the first documented (never know if some pilgrim didn't get there first but made no fuss) ascent of Mt. Everest.

"When they started they did not know how. They did not know how to get to the top of the mountain."

"Keep in mind that Edmund Hilary was an ordinary beekeeper in Auckland, New Zealand. Where did he ever get the idea he could go to the top of Everest?"

"It was believed that anyone that tried to get to the top would die." (And there are folks encased in ice up there.) Bob shares that he watched a TV interview with a Canadian woman that had just come down Everest, and was asked by reporters: "How does it feel now that you conquered the mountain?"

The woman climber's response: "We didn't conquer the mountain. That mountain can't be conquered. We conquered the limitations within ourselves."

Bob goes on to have us imagine Thomas Edison attempting to tell some of his friends, his wife or even his relatives about his "experiments.

"They would have thought he was right out of his mind."

Edison did not know how, he just knew he was going to do it. In another slide, Bob Proctor shares this tidbit:

"Thomas Edison's teachers told him he was "too stupid to learn anything." He was fired from his first two jobs for being "non-productive." As an inventor, Edison made 1,000 unsuccessful attempts at inventing the light bulb. When a reporter asked, "How did it feel to fail 1,000 times." Edison replied, "I didn't fail 1,000 times. The light bulb was an invention with 1,000 steps.""

And, consider this, the Wright Brothers were bicycle mechanics.

"Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible." - Lord Kelvin, The Royal Society of London, June 1985

I agree with Bob, that most people are locked into the idea of HOW (and then don't budge). When, to me, what matters is WHAT? or WHY? In the video, he asks to inquire: "WHAT DO I REALLY WANT? Just make a decision on what it is you want."

"The way to maintain one's connetion to the wild is to ask yourself what it is that you want." - Clarissa Pinkola Estes in the Intuition chapter, Women Who Run With Wolves

"You won't know how until after you do it," Bob continues.

So what does that mean you don't know how? It means you're on the edge of Unknown, hurtling toward another eternal horizon, and there aren't going to be a lot of folks that grok why you do what you do. After all, you are not them, and vice versa. You're on your path, unfolding your myth. No one else knows how for you.

Whatever skills and strategies acquired through status quo thinking and cultural conditioning fail to work in the domain of the soul's journey. Yet--something--something natural and spontaneous will take the place of automatically reacting to others out of habit.

If you do know how, it's probably too cozy for your soul to stretch to its own boundarylessness. So I agree with Joseph Campbell, "If the path before you is clear, you're probably on someone else's." As well as with Almine, "Let not the confusion that briefly figures in and out of your minds disconcert you. It is the releasing of the old; the releasing of the patterns and spiderwebs of existence."

In the midst of it all, it can feel lonely, or frustrating if you are seeking external kudos or support (it's not necessary if you can see yourself supported by and as Infinity and self-reference your Inner Ally). But like I said, just in case, consider me an ally, too.

p.s. Although Proctor made it clear that Edison mostly likely would have been underestimated by his relatives or friends, there are always other trailbrazers around to befriend. I'd have to research the precise dates of their friendship in regards to their respective inventions, yet Edison was close allies and peers with Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone in a mutually beneficial kinship.

Photo Credits: American Academy of Achievement photo of Hillary and Norgay at Everest base camp after their historic ascent; speaking of trailblazing: image of airship designed by architect Vincent Callebaut. "Hydrogenase, is a zero-emissions, biofuel-powered airship that specifically employs organic algae for power... The algae farm supplying the ship’s fuel is an organic purifying station that receives carbon dioxide delivered via ships. The CO2 is then processed by the seaweed," via Earth Techling.