They are possibilities we left off our wish list.

When we colour outside the lines, we’re drawing on our past to choose our futures - it can be whatever we want it to be. Awake! Or not, what could be beyond our dreams?

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Better than we could have imagined.

Dreams can be extravagant, theatrical, or untethered from reality - but then we wake up, and it’s reality playing all over again.

What do we know?

What do we believe?

No … beyond that.

Way beyond.

Imagination is different. It stretches our horizon further than we’ve ventured - ever, so how can it be a goal if it’s not real?

Life surprises us.

Something arrives that wasn’t on the menu at all.

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They appear as notions, hair-brained schemes and counter-punching in an active discussion about something being impossible, unlikely, requiring a moonshot or that it’s not BHAG story-worthy.

They appear without warning, while we’re still thinking about making a plan.

Too often, I think, we miss the opportunity as it comes, or we wilfully ignore it because it looks like too much hard work and we’re too busy with everything else.

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Certainty is a luxury … one we rarely see.

How we earn it is something we usually define a decade later; when looking back, we say, “That worked out well …”

There’s no way to know what’s waiting around the next corner, what might emerge from the next conversation, or when we’ll wake from a nap with a brilliant idea, a newly identified genius moment because we’ve “slept on it.”

Sometimes, we need a longer nap …

Life, work, opportunity, and imagination rarely arrive according to any scheduled timetable … if we knew the what and the when, but we don’t.

Inconvenient, sure enough, but it’s also where possibility lives.

Speed matters. So do urgency, instinct, preparedness, and some measure of good luck. Good management improves the odds, but it can’t manufacture certainty.

The trick, I think, is keeping possibility close to our centre at all times, close enough that when something appears, we recognize it.

Are you ready?

Are we ready?

To explore with confidence, to step outside the comfort zone … unafraid that it might feel like the twilight zone.

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Or are they our right directions - driven by choices we make: direct, follow, follow through on, dig in our heels on and commit to.

Yeah, yay, all of that too.

Wayfinding in life, and geopolitics too - it’s interesting when the wayfinder decides; others listen to what they say/promise.

That’s sometimes when that’s listening to time-driven pressures too much and paying attention to the compass not enough. History, which way the wind is blowin’ matter too.

This is true of many - mostly male, methinks - because wayfinding requires more than a compass; it requires some art, some poetry, and some vision to visualize the goal he’s seeking - it must have some shape, some attitude, some gratitude and move at the speed of light.

Except when it’s ‘go slow time’ or time-out time …

It’s hard to answer where you are going or how you propose to get there unless it’s job #1. Even then it’s not about the destination alone.

It’s ‘who are you?’ when you get there and whether you’re the same person looking the same in the mirror.

Or, completely remade.

Or both … these are good questions.

Answers are trickier.

Somebody else can redraw their map, but they don’t get to redraw you, or me, or anyone else.

Hello and pleasant Sunday, Musing readers; I’m awake.

Late, but up, moving forward.

Morning ablutions behind. sun-streaked showers blew through, leaving fresh air, wet streets, and an overcast Sunday. Friday’s necessary golf day displaced some work; Saturday’s twice-delayed listing launch displaced more. So, I’m back at the bench.

And then, the day intervened - so I’m finishing this piece mid-afternoon on Sunday … storm gone east, sky more blue …

Commerce keeps moving whether our schedules cooperate or not.

This morning brought map-news: President Trump’s latest Sharpie exercise, renaming Lake Ontario “Lake America” for U.S. federal purposes, followed quickly by Google Maps for American users.

The lake hasn’t moved.

Canada hasn’t moved. Yet names, directions, and maps can suddenly become political instructions.

Which raises a better question:

When somebody else redraws a map, does anyone need to pay attention?

This isn’t really about what one president calls one of our Great Lakes.

He’ll pass into history, and our Lake Ontario will remain.

I’m more curious about the strategy, negotiating posture, and how easily he thinks we’ll accept the latest insult and insane actions - not what you’d expect of someone wanting to right the canoe he’s overturned.

We all are accountable for what we say, how we describe our goals, ambitions or planned ‘excursions’ … and we get to own the consequences.

That starts, I think, with all relationships: trade, business, personal, public. private or secretive — we shouldn’t accept somebody else’s labels, directions, assumptions, and declarations about where things are, what they mean, and where we belong.

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I know that.

What interests me is why perfectly intelligent people can know something about themselves and still need someone standing outside the machinery to point at the obvious.

Maybe perspective isn’t what we lack.

Maybe we sometimes need to borrow somebody else’s.

Sometimes the most productive thing we can do looks suspiciously like not working.

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Distance - taking a break - doesn’t finish the work for us, but it can change the person who returns to it.

The Friday break was great ... but Saturday was calling me to get up and get busy.

So, today began early and ended late.

Plenty got done, sure. Plenty didn’t.

I’m writing this weary but satisfied, after a Saturday that became unexpectedly productive. Much of the credit belongs to Ralph, who was quite certain I needed Friday to take a break, to rest …

Dr. Ralph’s diagnosis was simple:

Get away from the workbench.

I didn’t explain it that way, but that was the message to me, one I needed.

Golf happened to be the prescription, but a hike, a beach walk, or several hours spent somewhere other than work might have done the same job.

The change of pace didn’t repair weary joints or sore muscles.

It did something more useful for the whole me carrying them around.

He was right.

Have you ever needed somebody outside your routine to see that before you could?

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Maybe I’m making too much of something small. Fine. I’ll take that risk. I find it’s something most people overlook, and I plead guilty, often, because when we get busy, mired in quag, we too easily overlook small kindnesses, thoes fleeting well-wishing acts, connections and evidence of connective tissue we have with someone who took some time to think about us, taking time to show gratitude for those might say, “Don’t mention it.” ..

But it’s important …

I remember on Christmas about 15 years ago - I gave gifts I already had; treasures of mine had done their job of giving me happiness and value - I didn’t feel suddenly poorer because those items would then give pleasure and value to someone else. It got a bit goofy - people wondering if I was ill and getting things ‘in order’ …

Some gifts don’t take up room, demand attention, or add another obligation.

Somehow, they give us more than they cost.

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There’s a considerable difference between someone telling us how to live our life and someone quietly saying, this made me think of you.

Some weeks seem to begin Monday afternoon and finally release me sometime late Wednesday, occasionally Thursday morning. Mine do that too often. I’m trying to do more, do it better, and find smarter ways to do it all faster.

Some well-meaning people suggest I drop something, lighten the load, or even skip a Musing day. I know what they mean.

Others say the opposite: keep going, make it better, explore the opportunity, take the challenge.

Then someone does something altogether different. They give me something they already value. Not advice. Not another assignment. A song, a thought, a tiny treasure that quietly says, I thought of you today.

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Yesterday, someone gave me one of those gifts.

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A quick preface note to skeptics … this column started as one thing and then became another - it’s not a process or self-serving construct to support my argument for why I’m considering something. Instead, an acknowledgement that I’m thinking about two things at the same time, illustrating how the first part led to the second part … not suggesting that a nuance makes anything more authentic, but as I wrote it yesterday, I had a real-time business reminder of the power of authenticity … so it felt a bit like a karmic message to pay attention to this.

Authenticity makes a sound, but you have to watch for it.

I think we typically judge the authenticity of people and organizations too late - after the evidence is in. Ask anyone who walks out of a movie, ask divorce lawyers and insolvency professionals and ask voters …

Authenticity is more than openly accepting or trusting words, promises or contracts; it’s a ‘yes, trust, but verify’ mindset.

Life doesn’t give us that luxury while we’re living it - we can’t watch a trailer before committing to watch, to come along on someone else’s journey. Before hindsight delivers its verdict, what tells us something is real?

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Words occupy a page.

But isn’t there more to it than that?

Voice may reveal more- not something hiding behind the words, but as a supporting/validation of what the speaker/writer is thinking. It’s there, not hiding, but harder to see there, all alone on the page.

It’s also what’s alive behind those words, the purpose and intent of the writer who, in the reading, becomes something different.

Not a writer whose words stand alone, with interpretation only in the eyes of the reader, but instead it’s the message of the writer, as speaker, providing a written record. There are no extra words - it’s the same text, but what else lives there in the space between the words, when tone and breath carry out their punctuation roles, and what of the story … the what, the where, the when … do they travel on the flat page, or on the air like saliva in the wind?

I’ve also been having a conversation with myself about authenticity.

We say actions prove intentions and words are easy.

Sure, fair enough, but that judgment usually comes later, after we know what someone actually did. In the present tense, while life is still unfolding, what tells us what’s real?

Words? Actions? Tone? Or some alignment among all three?

These questions wandered into these Musings for another reason.

A reader told me recently that hearing me read my writing conveyed something different from their reading the same words on the page.

Not better, necessarily.

Different. The voice carried tone, inflection, pace, hesitation, and pauses that the page could only imply.

Maybe authenticity has a sound.

It feels that way to me, often.

I don’t question that when I write or speak.

When I listen - to media, fact or fiction, entertainment, business exchanges, social situations, or when I read the writing of others - this thinking resonates like I’ve got an internal tuning fork. It must be internal, because anyone who hears me sing knows I don’t have an external one …

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Some obligations deserve less of us, and some routines deserve none. I’m not arguing for keeping every fence, or any fence for that matter, just because it happens to be standing. Because fences are boundaries we set, or ones set for us. That needs a ‘workshop with self’ sometimes, but no time for that today. But some barriers, fences, constructs of how we organize our lives, lifestyles and work without losing their magic moments, the fun, the play. Some are old, obsolete or time-wasting duplications …

I’m wondering only whether eliminating most/all of these constraints would produce more creativity, or allow some wandering or drift from what drives me. So, yes, I need some fences, but we need a great wide gate that’s easy to open too…

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I wonder if those things crowding my creativity are necessary, if they are also feeding it, or if they are standing there, barriers to feeling more free …

Before tearing down those fences, I need to make sure I’m clear on what’s holding them in place …

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We haven’t found it.

We’ve not been looking for it in the wrong places, because we weren’t looking at all …

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Destiny isn’t a thing.

But if there is a ‘thing that might convince us of destiny,’ it will arrive unannounced.

Recognizing it is possible only if and when we’re paying attention and capable of recognizing when it shows up …

So then, what makes me walk on by one thing and not another, or to be grabbed by the look, sound, tone of another?

That’s a mystery worth exploring more deeply.

Not out of idle curiosity or because I want to be your benefactor - to help you to find your treasures in life.

If we try to dissect our connections with people, can that teach us anything about how to predict or determine which connection is right for us, the right connections to make? I’d like to believe there is a realiable way - I’ve tried all the ways - but if I’d figured anything out that was a sure thing, I’d be basking in riches and counting the decades of bliss …

So, if we make some magical/successful/collabababorator-ship construct … what then do we credit that to?

Is it then about your magic, or mine, that may or may not fit for anyone else?

Let’s just agree that what’s mine is mine - this next adventure will last. Right? Every deal, new connection, arrangement is dependent on so many things we can’t know or control. That’s life, the world today, and chance-taking.

It may not turn out as planned - that’s my risk, and I plan to invest considerably in my future - because it seems we all have only one, and if I’m not prepared to invest myself fully at this point in my life, I’d deserve a reprimand from everyone I know, asking,

“What the hell are you waiting for?”

What you - friends, strangers, readers - do with anything I describe, share or give away as ‘what works for me’ is freely offered. It’s yours to choose, to use, to lose ...

No need to pay me a royalty, but donations are always welcome …

Or, if you need my services … please send me work, send me referrals, send me people who need my help in their lives, their homes, their businesses, their unrealized dreams … I’m open for business.

So, I ask of you - are you?

Are you open for business?

Are you willing to put your life on the line, taking a reasonable level of risk to change from ‘who you are, what you are, and where you are’ to get what you want to give/get/receive when you find it?

Before you answer, consider that it will involve putting your life, some parts, or maybe the whole of it into the hands and trust someone who shows they’re worth it, worth the risk or not - but they’re interested in leaping too.

I know, the answer to that is:

That depends on the situation.

No.

The situation, the project, the ‘JV’, the partnering, the alliance and shared commitment is not dependent on the situation; it depends on the people we work with ...

If we’re setting up a Kool-Aid stand on a hot summer day with our bestie, it’s not about the supply of sugar and water and flavouring - no, it’s location, location, location - one of the earliest exposures any kid can get to business, or to teaming up with a partner. If two partners choose a bone-headed location, there is a high risk of the venture failing; the best they can hope for is pleasant hand-holding until the next season, the next stretch of hot weather … and, lesson learned, they’ll set up where the paving crew is doing its work.

I love this great quote from Hal C. Banks:

“If at first you succeed, try to hide your astonishment.”

So, how do we find our collaborator(s)?

Do we/they need to know about ‘what we are going to collaborate on’?

No

I can, we can, you can … we can all drift through a room, a conversation, a crowded marketplace, even an ordinary day, without anything making us stop.

But should I then wonder whether I missed the very thing I’ve been waiting for?

A person. An idea. A few unexpected words.

Something faint enough to overlook, or heavy fast freight-train obvious?

We say,

“I’ll know it when I see it.”

Easy words.

But will we?

Will you?

Am I paying attention, or merely looking?

There’s a difference.

Magic isn’t hiding, nor is it found by hiding from it.

I’m simply busy, focused, and staring at whatever already has my attention.

So are you.

Everyone is. And yet so many of those ‘everyone’ folks aren’t happy with something very significant in their lives.

So I’m asking myself a harder question:

If something life-changing appeared today, would I recognize it?

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NOTE TO FREE SUBSCRIBERS … starting in two days … this will be as far as you can go - our 7-day free trial will end in two days; then the ‘paywall’ will be here at the end of the first main portion of each day’s Musings … so, if you wish to continue to see ‘the entire daily Musing column’, you’ll need to upgraid to the PAID subscriber version.

Many thanks to all Musing readers and subscribers - so glad to have you, and I hope you’ll continue to read and enjoy my ‘life on display daily’ thoughts, feelings, fears, hopes and occasional punctuations of trivia that matters to me.’- and, many thanks to paid subscribers - both current and lapsed - your support has been appreciated and a meaninful help to me when my wallet and spirit needed it most - I’m forever indebted to you for your kindness.

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So, what matters enough now?

The answer determines what gets more of us, more of our time and attention - but, in an ideal world, can any issue, problem or person demand, command, or expect to get all of us?

A newborn baby expects and deserves:

• all of everything from those who brought them into the world - yeah, me too.

I didn’t know what I needed and wanted most - I got what I got. I was determined to make ‘no mistake’ with my kids. Whether or not I prepared them for life, their answers would be different from mine, certainly, as it is for most people if they’re being honest …

But, here’s the rub:

I survived, rather well, I think, despite evolving views about what comes after birth, and what kind of life we should have expected from our parents, what they should have better prepared us for, or protected us from.

We got only one thing that we all should have - we had a chance to live.

No guarantees; not everyone gets a trophy.

We all deserve some ‘pity party time’; but if you didn’t get past that a long time ago, I recommend counselling …

Life is hard, life is great, then it’s over.

Full stop.

That’s all there is.

It’s all there ever was.

And, if we look, the instruction book for life is found more easily in nature than in humans …

A newborn baby giraffe expects and deserves all of everything from those who brought them into the world - yeah, sure! …

Not really … what were you expecting?

First, birth - then you’re on your own. We see it in newborn critters in the wild, like giraffes … they drop out of the messy, icky afterbirth, get licked off, and get moving before predators eat them alive.

In the wild or at the zoo

Either way, we get dumped into the world, and then it’s time to get up because we’re all survivors, or not. We can do it alone. We all can. Most of us need others at different stages of our lives.

Most of us are self-centred, needy babies, expecting to be cuddled and diapered at both ends … of our lives.

Sadly, we enter the world naked and alone, and we leave it that way too - some too soon, and some ‘not soon enough’ …

But, as we walk the path of life, we’d prefer not to walk alone. That deserves one of those ‘international/universal road signs’ indicating that walking a beach, sitting in a cafe, running to catch a plane or holding hands at someone’s deathbed should not be done alone.

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For all of us, and those giraffes, tomorrow doesn’t begin today - it’s been underway for a while now.

Much of it is already happening.

Tomorrow is already hiding inside our today, where everything can matter, but how can everything matter equally?

It doesn’t.

It’s like the giraffe’s circle of life - there from their first day:

• be born

• eat, sleep, eat, sleep, repeat … etc.

• move

• keep it up, all of it

• die

If you recall from the movie The Lion King, the Zulu song Circle of Life translates to “Here comes a lion, oh yes, it’s a lion.” .. which seems like an appropriate early childhood education message for baby giraffes.

Warning shout from Giraffes playing in the wild:

“Lion!”

Or, in Canada, in the dead of winter, kids playing road hockey:

“Car !!!”

Be warned, everyone, it’s a car-beats-kid world out there.

So, what’s next, which direction should we go?

It’s hard not to be distracted by everything going on.

Geopolitical theatre, trade-war threats, reckless commentary, and decisions made elsewhere land squarely on Canadian businesses, families, communities, and our future. I’m, in this moment, calling out Trump, as the lyin’ king.

Ignore idiocy, sure, whenever we can …

We can’t tune it out.

It matters.

And yet ordinary life refuses to stop.

Yesterday was Sunday.

I worked through the usual task pile, thought about Monday, projects, priorities, people, and what needs doing next.

Three must-do things competed with hundreds of sometime-soon things. Familiar territory, familiar incomplete agenda …

But yesterday is gone.

Today is what happens after yesterday, and lately that feels more important to me.

More urgent, certainly, but strangely more peaceful too.

Attention isn’t retreat from reality; it’s deciding how much of ourselves reality gets to consume today, tomorrow or ever.

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Experience is useful information, like extra luggage we pack but don’t really need for the next segment of our journey, and we all know how often we ask ourselves, “So why did I pack this and two of those … “ because we all know we have, many times.

ART

I’ve been mulling/juggling too many things for any single day lately.

Oddly, I think that’s exactly what I needed.

Busy hands, keyboard, phone, meetings, paperwork, deal-doing/redoing/undoing, writing and publishing keep the body occupied while something less orderly happens upstairs. Ideas tumble like gravel in a rock polisher, knocking off rough edges, revealing what might become smooth enough to carry forward.

I’ve never been much for long-term plans.

It was about forty years ago that I spent an entire long weekend writing a five-year personal and business plan.

Seven years later I found it in a drawer and laughed my ass off …

It was ambitious, earnest. I was so full of myself. And things turned out in no way like my plan.

I’ve only tried ‘short-term’ planning since … it’s more focused and doesn’t have to peer around corners I’ve not reached yet.

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Due diligence matters, experience matters, probability matters, and some risks deserve an immediate no.

Or a yes.

I’m interested in the territory left over after sensible analysis has done everything it can do because that’s what ordinary people do.

No spreadsheet can tell us what any one action itself might cause to exist, or to permit.

What if risk and opportunity aren’t opposites at all?

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Some doors are discovered.

Others exist only because we decided to walk toward the wall.

Opportunity and risk are usually discussed as if they sit on opposite sides of a scale, waiting for sensible people to calculate the trade-off.

I’m wondering whether that misses the most interesting part.

Sometimes we take a risk and, quite unexpectedly, create an opportunity that didn’t exist before.

Other times, we chase an opportunity we can see clearly, only to discover it came carrying invisible luggage:

• obligations

• consequences

• complications

• and risks

One begins with uncertainty and produces possibility.

The other begins with possibility and produces uncertainty.

Which one are you better at recognizing before you act?

Maybe neither.

Maybe that’s the point.

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Or they have an appointment on ours.

Others become part of the architecture of our lives - not usually a blueprint, but more likely it’s a crazy, difficult renovation project to connect two un-alike pieces of people or projects that can fit …

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In my day, most days, I'm busy talking with two or three or four people about something that matters right then.

Usually it’s work: a deal, a transaction, a problem to solve, a decision that won’t make itself. That cast changes regularly. People arrive, occupy the foreground for a while, then ebb away as the work moves on.

But there’s another group entirely. They’re not attached to today’s file, problem, deadline, or opportunity. They’re the people who remain in the picture week after week, year after year. Some are friends, some colleagues, some clients who became something more. I’m realizing I need both groups, but I don’t need them in the same way.

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The heat is in the words, and the hammering, some because some words pass through us; others strike something already hot, and suddenly the world starts arranging itself around what we can no longer ignore.

Of course, noticing more doesn’t prove we’ve discovered some grand truth.

Fascination can sharpen our eyesight or distort the view completely; that’s why, whenever something truly grabs our attention, it deserves careful examination as well as our happy enthusiasm.

I’m not arguing that every fixation deserves following, only that when something repeatedly commands our attention, it may deserve more effort than simply questioning the why.

Yes, not every sentence deserves a second reading, but some - the most powerful messages that connect with us in heart, belly, brain or tennis-elbow, we are fascinated beyond our normal level of interest in important things, because now we have good reasons for investing time and effort - it’s not just a passing interest or a chance to binge-watch some exciting drama … it’s the writing, it’s the acting, it’s the scenery and most of all - words matter, minds can align or minds can be changed if the case can be made. And it can

A message that matters, a single sentence or paragraph, arrests and handcuffs us; the most powerful ones earn a third, and a tenth sometimes. Handcuffed then too.

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Sometimes we don’t discover an idea. We discover that it has been waiting for us.

I’ve been moved lately by the power of words, and by people who know how to work them. Wordsmithing is the most apt old metaphor. Picture the blacksmith at his anvil, hammering hot iron into shape.

Now picture this writer/blacksmith, at my anvil, hammering words until they hold together well. Sometimes it’s a hot topic, a hot temper, the heat of the moment, or warmth we need on a cold night.

The remarkable part isn’t merely the word choices; it’s thought’s intentions. It’s what happens when keystrokes reshape familiar words that heat things up …

How often have you read and reread a sentence ten times, not because you missed it, but because it found you and grabbed your undivided attention?

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Life doesn’t courteously arrange happiness, grief, opportunity, inconvenience, and revelation into separate appointments over time, or permit re-booking them.

Whatever ‘the items du jour’ are, they turn up together.

The sorting or scheduling comes later, if it comes at all.

A perfectly ordinary day can be carrying something enormous without bothering to tell us.

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.Sometimes the meaning arrives late, after we’ve already walked past the moment that created it.

Some days arrive carrying their own flashlight or lantern.

Others show up apparently determined to test every plan, patience, assumption, and good intention we packed for the trip we weren’t planning just yet.

The odd part is that I often don’t know which kind of day I’m having until days later, so I might be feeling deer-in-headlight vulnerable the same day, or waking up from some groggy recollections a year from now, finally ‘getting it’ about something that happened way back when …

Sometimes much later, a week after, or the full meaning arrives during or immediately after that moment, with a self-forehead-slap, a grin, a muttered %!#@, or coming to the realization that something I nearly ignored mattered more than I knew.

That’s been on my mind because an email has been sitting with me since my first day in France in May. Unexpected. Intriguing. An invitation to discuss working together. I haven’t answered yet.

Why not?

Maybe today is the day.

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NO, the Grand Canyon is awesome, the Northern Lights/aurora borealis are awesome, childbirth is awesome, and a hole-in-one is awesome - unless it’s mini-golf.

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Significance doesn’t ask whether we’re ready, or whether we’ll like it.

MOM

(that’s WOW upside down)

“WOW … that’s big news!”

~ that phrase, that’s my invention.

I’m reasonably certain nobody put those words together before I did, so I’m claiming it the way a gold-rush prospector planted a stake and declared the ground his.

I’ll keep claiming it until somebody produces contrary evidence.

It isn’t an every-hour, every-day exclamation.

That would cheapen it.

For me, WOW is reserved for news big enough to interrupt the ordinary flow of things. It makes us look twice, choke up, grin, swear softly, roar, or simply sit still for a moment.

And “big” doesn’t automatically mean good.

The better test is this: did something just happen that changes what you thought you knew, expected, feared, hoped, or imagined might come to be today?

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There’s a trap here too.

Sure, easy, nice, simple - give your writing to a Beta reader, or two, or three - this seems to be a first-step manuscript review before changes, and then aprez-changes, what comes next?

It seems so simple, really: place your work, your words, to someone to see, to review and to offer their thoughts, their reaction. Scary. Important. Where’s the rule book?

Choosing carefully who we ask can’t be a clever way to choose only people likely to agree with us. Everyone has to do what’s right for them, and what’s right for the process of write, right, wrong, re-write…

If everyone at our table sees things pretty much as we do, we haven’t assembled advisers; we’ve assembled an audience of fans, comrades, a mutual admirational society, my baby and me ...

Sometimes the person worth hearing is precisely the one likely to make us uncomfortable. Hearing that discussed in a forum at a conference yesterday was just conversation for everyone in the room, but I felt a shiver in my seat …

Feedback is a daunting challenge whether done seriously or flippantly - so it’s partly about the feedback, and partly about the relationships … the feedbackor, and feedbackee …

Some people know us well and still may be the wrong people to ask.

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.The whole truth may belong on the table, but that doesn’t mean every opinion deserves a chair at the table, or a vote on anything ...

I came away from the writers’ conference thinking about feedback differently.

In a workshop, we discussed ‘who to trust’ when we choose readers to give us feedback on our writing, because they know much better than other caring types - something about our craft, structure, voice, or the thing we’re trying to make better.

Life is messier.

When we ask for feedback on anything - and methinks women tend to do this more than men do, but in any case- when we ask for feedback on a wide range of things that don’t matter, ones that do matter a bit vs. those that matter enormously - we always risk getting feedback we didn’t solicit from people who we’d rather kept their mouths shut and their noses stuck somewhere else.

But, generally speaking, we don’t ask strangers or professionals - we ask friends because they know us, but just as some will miss-step because they don’t know us well enough, or our writing well enough, sometimes they know us too well.

They may protect us, cheer us, or remember an older version of us.

Yet, someone less familiar may see what we can’t.

And the risk is that both might blow smoke up our proverbial asses.

Or some will kiss that same ass.

So the useful question isn’t simply, “Whose opinion do I value?” It’s, “Whose perspective belongs in this particular conversation?”

And if I’m asking for the whole truth, am I actually prepared to hear something I didn’t invite because I wanted agreement?

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Others are old bruises forecasting changes in the weather.

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Maybe disappointments deserve a vote about our tomorrow.

But not a veto.

Q. - What is this?

A - Whatever we want it to be!

At a writers’ conference session called Bring Your Trauma, I expected to learn more about making fictional characters believable. I did.

I also got ambushed by a question about myself: how much of what I call expectation is simply old experience wearing tomorrow’s clothes?

I’ve had expectations all my life.

Some worked. Some collapsed. Some were probably pipedreams wearing business shoes. And some were shaped by something harder to measure: the absence of support, encouragement, or someone saying, “I can see that too.”

So, when expectations arrive now, are they forecasts, hopes, defences, or memories pretending to know the future?

What are yours made of?

I know, it’s not any easy answer to cough up.

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Expectations are best not to have - the nature of everything is what others thought it should be and how they believed it ought to be done - and I’m not in control of anything or anyone - it’s hard enough being in control of ourselves.

Whole truth has no warranty; trust begins where our control over the outcome ends, which doesn’t put us way out there on the skinny branches without a net - it justs feels that way …

I’m talking about truths that could reasonably change someone’s understanding, their choices, or what they believe they’re stepping into with us.

That’s different.

Keeping irrelevant history private is privacy.

Keeping consequential truth hidden because we’re frightened of the answer is something else.

Some truths stay private because they should.

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The hardest conversation may be the one where honesty offers no promise about what comes after it; there is ‘what comes next?’ …

We’re terrific at celebrating expectations fulfilled. People arrive early. Seventeen moving parts behave themselves. The pancake flips and lands right side up. We smile, perhaps congratulate ourselves, and get on with the day.

Other outcomes aren’t nearly as tidy.

Plans unravel. Expectations miss by a country mile. Something we did, failed to do, or badly misjudged becomes part of the permanent record between our ears. We own it. We can’t reverse it, edit it, or pretend we’ve forgotten. Then, eventually, comes one person for whom dribbles and drabs won’t do. What happens when somebody matters enough that the whole truth belongs on the table?

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What we notice, what meaning we assign,

and what we decide to do next.

Gratitude + attitude + words colliding

What we notice matters; what we do with it matters more; let’s go to ancient Persia, let’s talk poetry, let’s talk real life, right here, right now ...

Some words become measuring sticks for our lives - mine anyway.

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Gratitude can remember yesterday; attitude still has to get us through today.

This scene looks different at night, when it’s calm, when it’s stormy; we aren’t standing atop that cliff, and we’re not wading in the surf … we’re the ocean and the rocky shore, most of all when it’s a dark and stormy night …

I’ve had a couple of lines I’ve always attributed to Hafiz, wandering around in my head again in recent days, and the yearning to say them to someone who says them back to me is a quest that has not yet found the magic the words seem to require; or have I missed that, like ships passing in the night:

I can think of no greater devotion,
Than to be shore to your ocean.

Then there’s Robert Frost’s version, longer and more polished, but carrying much the same powerful image: of a shore holding its place while the ocean keeps arriving.

The heart can think of no devotion

Greater than being shore to ocean -

Holding the curve of one position,

Counting an endless repetition.

- Robert Frost

So, who borrowed from whom?

I’ve been thinking for many years; those were my accurate recollections of Daniel Ledinksy’s words in his translation of Hafiz’s work. In checking, CHAT-gee-pee-tee, it cautioned me not to mention Hafiz or Ledinsky for fear I’ll offend Frost fans. I’ve long liked lots of Frost-stuff, especially The Road Not Taken, though you gotta love Yogi Berra’s line better,

“When you come to a fork in the road, take it?”

I’ll leave that argument to people with more footnotes and less coffee.

What interests me is why certain words stay with us. I think that’s more than memorizing bumper stickers, like Gloria Steinem’s:

A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle,

That may be true, but fish need their tires pumped, their chain back on the sprocket, etc. But when I met her I didn’t bring up that trivial bit - because the session, the speech and the private chat and the hug she offered and I accepted - that bumper sticker is a smile and someone’s clever marketing; the experience was something else altogether - being in the audience, having a few private minutes and fear of crushing someone who hugs you tight but matching their action would be like crushing/injuring a very tall skinny shore-bird - that was magical; but it’s a memory.

I’m focused today more on the present and the immediate future. The longer-term things are going to be the steps-not-yet taken, after current tasks, deadlines and planned things get done … eventually, they get done, because I don’t give up on things that matter, or people who matter most of all. They know who they are.

They fit something we feel, have felt, and want to feel again.

I think it’s that precious moments and feelings remind us of someone, something said, a door opening, a problem softening/solving, or a laugh arriving precisely when needed. These are worth carrying always, whether that’s someone living or dead, or who might have written those words in the 13th century - because CHATG-think has Hafiz in the 14th century.

Details matter, sure. Feelings and connection to things, with or without some precise word-set or memory demanding to be heard. That’s fine, but those words and feelings - from ‘whenevA’ and whoever said them should never leave us. (How Hafiz or Frost might have advance-plagiarized words I hadn’t said or written yet remains a mystery I’m not fussed about solving.)

I’m increasingly unwilling to treat those things as ordinary.

Because they add value to my life every time I say them or write them and remember how I felt last night, or this morning.

I recommend making magic with words - it’s not about where you are, who you are with (well, it is, but that only matters to two )

because, in the whole world, nobody cares about you nearly as much

as you do.

That’s not selfish, or proud, or clear, or self-important - it’s all of those.

And that’s a huge thing at the centre of each of us - we are, in that respect, self-centred, selfish and greedy to taste more of what we’ve developed a taste for and a love of … to feel that way, and to be the shore to someone’s ocean,

and vicey-versey.

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Which ones- which past-present-future imagined adventures deserve to unfold, and do they align with what at least one client, co-creator, or fellow-fool might also dream - can they see it too?

Can we and they see it through? ….

Wanting more is easy; choosing what earns our life-spent upon it is not a light or easy choice, even though I have memories, closed files and ‘pursuit costs’ in cash/brain cells/trips/costs with faded receipts in boxes of old accounting recrords; they are not lost opportunities, they are ones I spent so much effort and money on, ones that didnt work or work as well as I dreamed. And atop that sunk cash, the missed opportunities I missed out on, didn’t see or didn’t have the flexibility to pursue - I could bleed about those even more.

But, for what?

We spend plenty of time asking what we want, but that begs another question:

is ‘what deserves to be wanted?’ … because we all drive by projects and see the stupidity of a development that had no chance of working.

And, without being cynical, we can all see careers, lifestyles and families where we see ‘there was a set up for failure, not success.’

And yet, we all see and hear success stories where those who started, and those who picked up the pieces, never made a go of something.

But, then along came ________ and they turned that rubble into beauty, turned financial disaster into a homerun winning triumph.

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Some dreams need feeding, some need testing, and a few old ones probably belong in the shredder.

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