You Are an Inspired Collection of Chemistry and Story

There's a particular joy to eating your kids' cast-off pizza crusts as the bread to dip into your soup and finding an overlooked bit of pepperoni in the mix.

That was a comment I left on my own Facebook post, which read: Hrm. I wanted to take a lunchtime walk to warm up, but found the air outside has become populated by migratory polka-dots of wetness.

I am always attempting to see (and say) things in new and unusual ways.

Air is never static. It is invisible and seemingly incorporeal, yet we feel it always, moving, shifting, blowing. We know it weighs upon us from travel to higher and lower altitudes, can feel the changes in pressure. It is a physical force, constantly surrounding us, enveloping us, pushing past and against us.

And the air sings. It makes sounds as it shapes itself around and through different spaces. It moves what it impacts, causing those things to whisper, vibrate, creak, and groan.

Unseeable--except in the way it moves visible things. So, invisible itself while continuously creating visible interactions. Air's evidence is everywhere.

The tree that tries to stand firm before the wind, rigid and unchanging, eventually breaks and snaps. The tree that bends with the wind, that accepts the invitation to interact, that flows with the air and resists ossification--that tree sways with grace and fluidity. That tree dances. That tree sings. That tree integrates with the air in a beautiful shared existence.

Leadership, I wrote last week, is helping people to flow together. Moving together in the same direction, mingling, mixing, intertwining; fluid, flexible, adapting and adjusting to each other.

Peace comes from being able to flow with others, with unseen tides and winds, with change, from relationship with others, dancing and singing together, united in psithurism.

The intention to see usual things in unusual ways is part of a general attempt to open myself to a more intuitive, associative way of thinking in order to foster more creativity and openness. I acquired a couple of sets of "divination cards" at the start of the year along with a cast-off case of cards with wise quotations (not sure the provenance since part of the box is missing). I decided to start exercising my poetic muscles by randomly drawing a card from each set and putting them into conversation with each other and other interesting bits I've read, then seeing what words I can come up with in response.

The above is one such response. Here are the prompts:

Woodland Wardens Card: XXXIX 

The Otter and Cattail - "Peace"

The otter glides peacefully through the water with grace and fluidity. It brings Calm and joy. The cattail is a symbol of peace and prosperity.

- Do I allow myself to enjoy peace?

- Am I struggling needlessly against a current?

Almanac of Birds card: Common Tern 

follow your doubt

to the outer edge of yourself

feel the fury of your being

and the plaintive cry of time

bearing the consequence

of a widening and deepening

inner sea of changes

with a heart unossified

Acknowledging a mistake just means that you are wiser today than you were yesterday.

― Kelly Ann Rothaus

Occasionally indulging in a do-nothing day is more than worth the price.

― Malcolm Forbes

The moon sails forever, and has sailed forever, through the dark sky that lives inside us as much as the night sky above our house. We have grown and evolved on this planet from the simplest cells to the extraordinarily complex creatures we are, in an intimate parallel with our waxing and waning.

 . . . the moon's ever shifting, half-hidden gravitational power, making itself known through the tides or the tides in our bodies, always pulling us away from any fixed point to which we try to hold, always pushing and pulling us thorough powerful fields of attraction that seem to mimic and embody our own desires, whether we wish to be pulled or not, whether we wish to have those powerful upsetting tidal desires or no.

In the human imagination, the moon has always represented an alternative life; another body of deeper parallel laws than the ones we follow in the full light of our rules-based days. The moon tells us we are subject to powers far beyond our ability to summarize or understand. In the human mythic inheritance, the moon is the body's susceptibility to other bodies, our helpless attraction to what calls us beyond our present life; no matter how perfectly arranged that life may be, the moon embodies our deeply felt response to the greater, physical, tidal pulls of existence.

― David Whyte in Consolations II

psithurism (noun): the sound of the wind through the trees.

I have found my new church.

I am a Psithurist.

― Elizabeth C. Bunce Facebook comment

I recently completed a week-long leadership training program at my organization. Many interesting topics and values that align closely with mine, from the idea of public service as a calling that supports democracy to the idea that the best way to be a high-performing organization is to strive for a participative structure and culture (in contrast to authoritarian). Four from my library system were part of the group of around 30 from the full county government participating for the week, and after we finished our senior leader asked for our thoughts. I responded:

There are too many great ideas to try to boil it down to just one thing, but a frame that I think I'll find omnipresent and always useful is to measure all of my reactions, plans, and actions against Douglas McGregor's idea that management attitudes can be categorized as either Theory X (authoritarian) or Theory Y (participative). I want to pointedly ask myself what view of human nature is informing my thoughts and what expectations will be communicated (and perceived) in how I implement them.

• Does this (thought, message, decision, interaction) treat people like I trust them and expect them to naturally do their best and have good judgment?
• Does it make sure they know that's how I feel?
• How can I make sure they understand that I believe in them?

A central concept to our leadership philosophy is trust, the importance of trust between people at all levels of the organization. And trusting others requires believing they are trustworthy. To find people trustworthy, we need to begin with a view that human nature is more cooperative, compassionate, and generous than it is selfish, competitive, and destructive; and that people are motivated by a desire to succeed and contribute, to feel good about themselves by doing good work. People almost always respond to the expectations others communicate to them. In order to draw that goodness out of people and not encourage the less social traits, we need to be clear about our own positive expectations of them--then find structures and systems that communicate those expectations and a sense of trust.

A bit more about McGregor's ideas, briefly, from Wikipedia:

In the book The Human Side of Enterprise (1960), McGregor identified an approach of creating an environment within which employees are motivated via authoritative direction and control or integration and self-control, which he called theory X and theory Y, respectively.

Theory X is based on negative assumptions regarding the typical worker. This management style assumes that the typical worker has little ambition, avoids responsibility, and is individual-goal oriented. In general, Theory X style managers believe their employees are less intelligent, lazier, and work solely for a sustainable income. Management believes employees' work is based on their own self-interest. Managers who believe employees operate in this manner are more likely to use rewards or punishments as motivation.

Theory Y is based on positive assumptions regarding the typical worker. Theory Y managers assume employees are internally motivated, enjoy their job, and work to better themselves without a direct reward in return. These managers view their employees as one of the most valuable assets to the company, driving the internal workings of the corporation. Employees additionally tend to take full responsibility for their work and do not need close supervision to create a quality product. Theory Y managers gravitate towards relating to the worker on a more personal level, as opposed to a more conductive and teaching-based relationship.

The longer I work with others, the longer I am a parent, the longer I am in relationship with others--the longer I am alive--the more clearly I see these beliefs and practices as essential and true, as necessary to creating a more positive world.

Speaking of being a parent, here's something I recently captured to share.

Momentary Morsels from this Morning's Murmerings:

"Can have some of this cake to finish my breakfast?"

"Go ahead and cut yourself a slice; but not too big--we've all been eating too much sugar lately."

"I know. I'm trying to build up my immunity through exposure to get ready for my birthday."

-----

"Mom! [Younger]'s threatening to spray me with a water gun!"

"That sounds cool and refreshing."

"What?!"

"Never let it be said that I don't encourage my children's strengths."

-----

"Aaaaaagggghhhhhh!!!"

"Why are you yelling?"

"Because Mom is making me late for school!"

"She is?"

"Yes. She told me I have to brush my hair and teeth."

-----

"Who brought that water gun into the house?"

"[Older]."

"So . . . natural consequences."

"And that's why we don't allow guns in our house, because they often end up getting used on the owner."

-----

"I already cleaned my face."

"You still have some . . . how did you get Nutella under your eye?"

"Wow, and your tummy."

All of that within roughly a 30-minute window.

And, from a day or two later:

Going through old books with the boys to decide if we want to keep or donate them. "Hmm. 'I Love My Daddy Because.' What do you think?"

[Older], without missing a beat, "Oh, that's definitely a fictional book."

My work preparing him to one day be a father progresses well, as he's clearly on his way to mastering the art of the dad joke.

The art of parenting.

Speaking of which, a Theory Y parenting approach is demonstrated in this article.

What Adults Lose When They Put Down Children’s Books

“When we dismiss children’s books, what we’re really doing is failing to recognize the potential of children.” To this, I would add that in dismissing children’s books, adults fail to recognize the potential of people.

Reading children’s literature in adulthood isn’t just a nostalgia impulse or an exercise to undertake in the context of sharing stories with kids. Incorporating these books into a literary diet—whether or not a person has children—can help anyone to see and hear with fresh eyes and ears, to find or rediscover wonder in the large (mountain ranges, the moon) and the small (a hummingbird, a smile, a square). In my home office, surrounding myself with kids’ books puts me in a state of mind that complicates and enriches my thinking. The books have also nudged me toward some of my more original ideas. . . . 

Kids, he argues, are better at make-believe than adults, and may be better equipped than adults to engage deeply with stories, because they have to be. . . . 

Many children’s books, after all, engage in leaps of logic. They can be strange, spooky, sometimes existentially unsettling. It takes an attentive, receptive intellect to process that type of weirdness, to follow along with a writer’s or illustrator’s nonsense and suspend judgment or disbelief. . . . 

Children’s books activate a part of the brain that some adults—caught up in the day-to-day business of work or child-rearing or simply survival—may have unwittingly allowed to go dormant.

The article frequently references a new book by Mac Barnett, Make Believe, which I hope to read sometime soon.

The Almanac of Birds cards that I have been enjoying are a product of poet, artist, author, and blogger Maria Popova. She recently started a new collaborative project with Willow Defebaugh called Reweaving the Rainbow.

Each weekend, we take one science news article and let the words in it come loose, come alive, arrange themselves into whatever the unconscious wants to say to the mind, then we exchange what emerges. . . . This free Substack is the record of our weekly adventures in language, wonder, and the secret wisdom of the heart: Every Saturday, we share the divinations we each made of a piece of science news, laid out over a piece of 18th- or 19th-century scientific illustration that shines a sidewise gleam on the subject.

I want to share a few here, starting with this one;

your mythology is breaking down

what now?

you are on this earth

because tiny gods began to crawl

and photosynthesis breathed

light into oxygen

across four billion years

life built you a form from energy

reshaping soil and waste

into a world

you can withstand today

all is transitional

and this one;

we are wild

particles of time

whirling to find

each other

as we drift apart

our lives sharpened

and made wider

if we can survive

the velocity of love

both from their About page.

A bit of video has been making the rounds lately, part of something actor Javier Bardem said in response to a question during an interview at the Cannes Film Festival. A transcript:

 . . . comes from the origins of what this so-called "toxic masculinity" comes from, which is the education, the bad education we have received for many ages which I'm part of. I'm 57 years old coming from a very machista country called Spain where there is an average of two women killed monthly by their ex-husbands or ex-boyfriends. Which is horrible. Just that amount of women being murdered. It's unbelievable. And we kind of normalized it. It's like, "Well, yeah, it's horrible." I mean are we fucking nuts? We are killing women because some men think they own them. They possess them. 

So . . . and that problem also goes to Mister Trump and Mister Putin and Mister Netanyahu. The big balls man saying, "my cock is bigger than yours and I'm going to bomb the shit out of you." It's a fucking male toxic behavior that is creating thousands of death of people.

It came across my feed on Facebook.

And, of course, I endorse it wholeheartedly.

One of the thinkers informing my thoughts about people and the leadership program I mentioned above is Daniel Pink and his book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, which argues that fundamental to intrinsic motivation are drives for autonomy, mastery, and purpose. I follow him on Facebook, and this Post also recently came across my feed:

The Dunning-Kruger effect, from a 1999 Cornell study, found people scoring in the bottom quartile on tests rated themselves above average. The mechanism is simple. The skill needed to do the work is the same skill needed to recognize you can't do it.

Reference: Study source: Light, N., Fernbach, P. M., Rabb, N., Geana, M. V., & Sloman, S. A. (2022).

The people most wrong about science share one trait: they are the most confident they are right. Researches studied people rejecting scientific consensus. They were not just misinformed. They believed they were experts. When tested, they scored the lowest. And the more confident they felt, the worse they performed. Here is the real problem. The more certain someone is, the less likely they are to change. So dumping facts does not work. People who think they know enough stop listening. The key is not more information. It is revealing the gap. Curiosity begins where certainty breaks down.

That leads nicely into this [Awkwardly Titled Article] that I won't bother reproducing all about the importance of intellectual humility. Curiosity begins where certainty breaks down.

There is a particular small behavior that, on close observation, distinguishes the most intelligent people in any given room from the rest of the participants. The behavior is the willingness to change one’s mind, in real time, in front of the other people in the room, when new information or argument makes it clear that one’s previous position was wrong.

This behavior is, by every available measure, considerably rarer than the wider culture’s self-image would suggest. Most adults, in most contested conversations, do not perform it. The most intelligent people, on the available evidence, perform it considerably more often than the rest. The standard cultural framing tends to interpret this difference as a sign that the intelligent people care less about being right. The framing is, on close examination, almost exactly the opposite of what is actually happening.

What is actually happening, on the available psychological evidence, is that the intelligent people care a great deal about being right. They just no longer need to look right while they are working out what is true. The decoupling of these two needs is what produces the visible behavior. The wider population has not, in most cases, performed the decoupling, and accordingly continues to require the appearance of correctness to be maintained even when the underlying belief is actively being updated. . . . 

The first need is the need to actually be right. . . . 

The second need is the need to appear right. . . . The need is, on close examination, structurally distinct from the first need, even though the wider culture tends to treat them as the same.

The two needs are, in most adults, fused. The fusion is so complete that most adults cannot easily distinguish them in their own internal experience. The fusion is what produces, in contested conversations, the structural difficulty of changing one’s mind in public. The changing of mind, in a conversation in which one’s previous position has been stated, requires the temporary acceptance of looking wrong. The looking-wrong is what the second need is calibrated to avoid. The avoiding of looking wrong, accordingly, prevents the changing of mind, even in cases where the underlying evidence has made the changing of mind structurally warranted. . . . 

[The decoupling of the two needs] is what psychologists call intellectual humility, which is, on close examination, the cognitive trait that involves the partial decoupling of the two needs. . . . 

The study found that two cognitive variables predicted intellectual humility: intelligence and cognitive flexibility. . . . 

A 2025 study from Boston College identified “independence of intellect and ego” as the facet of intellectual humility most strongly associated with well-being outcomes. The facet, as the name suggests, involves the structural separation of one’s ego from one’s intellect. The intellectually humble person is, in this framing, someone whose sense of self is not, in any deep way, attached to the specific beliefs they currently hold. The beliefs can be revised without the self being threatened. The not-being-threatened is what allows the revision to occur in real time without the various defensive maneuvers that ordinary adults deploy in similar situations.

The Boston College study found that this facet of intellectual humility was specifically associated with higher subjective well-being, lower psychological distress, and reduced symptoms of depression. The intellectually humble person, on the available evidence, is not just better at producing accurate beliefs. The intellectually humble person is also, by structural design, less burdened by the ongoing internal work of defending positions that are no longer defensible. The not-defending is, in some real way, what produces the visible psychological ease that the wider register often notices in intellectually humble people. . . . 

The wider implication of all this, on close examination, is uncomfortable for the standard cultural framing of how intelligent people are supposed to behave. The standard framing tends to associate intelligence with certainty, with the visible production of confident answers, and with the maintenance of consistent positions across time. The empirical research suggests, more specifically, that the actually most intelligent people are doing something different. They are producing answers with calibrated uncertainty. They are willing to revise the answers when the evidence shifts. They are not, in any structural sense, attached to the consistency of their previous positions.

This is, in some real way, what the rest of the population is selecting against when it rewards visible confidence and punishes visible revision. The selection is producing, in most organizational contexts, a structural over-representation of confidently wrong people and a structural under-representation of intellectually humble people. Recent research has documented that intellectual humility is associated with greater knowledge acquisition, more effective learning, and better calibrated judgment under uncertainty. The over-representation of the alternative pattern is, accordingly, producing real costs in domains where accurate judgment matters more than the visible production of confident answers.

The article is rather repetitive and sensationalistic and it over-equates intelligence with intellectual humility, but it has good information.

There is always more to know.

From Why You Exist:

you are a handful

of time and dust

an inspired collection

of chemistry and story

born to learn

that everything is possible.

Reeling from tragedy, a former jazz musician-turned-schoolteacher named Adi answers a job listing advertising a chance to save the world. The to spend five weeks alone on the tiny, isolated Pacific Island of Santa Flora righting an ecological balance that’s gone severely out of whack, with the aim of preserving countless bird and plant species from certain extinction. What follows, however, is anything but balanced. The threats to the once-Edenic island, Adi soon learns, aren’t exactly what his employers said they were—and, complicating things further, he discovers he’s not alone on the island. Fearful for his own life, and for the fate of the island's, Adi spends his sun-drenched days rooting out the true threat to Santa Flora, and, by extension, to the world it occupies—and the desperate steps he must take to eradicate it.

That's the Goodreads blurb for Eradication: A Fable by Jonathan Miles, which I just finished reading. Here are the thoughts about it I captured in my review.

The word "Anthropocene" has recently received much attention as a proposed term for a new, current geological epoch in which human activity has become the dominant influence on Earth’s climate, ecosystems, and bio-geophysical processes. A related idea that I've come across is that there is no such thing as a purely natural, closed ecosystem that has never been impacted by outside elements. Ecosystems are always in contact with each other, impacting and influencing each other. There have always been "invasive species" and always will be. It's an ongoing dance.

In its own way, that's what this short novel is about. Not in so many words, not explicitly. It's a fable, a parable that captures the ideas as a story. And it's a marvelous little tale.

I think stories like this are best encountered on their own terms, without too much analysis to color the encounter--and to allow more intuitive associations to emerge in response to the experience. So I'll not say more as a review except to offer three short quotes from a different book I read recently, Right Story, Wrong Story by Tyson Yunkaporta, that emerged for me from my own associations.

Every story affects everyone else. You're in relation to everyone and everything. A living culture is one that is in a relationship of exchange with other cultures.

-----

Consider the possibility that you're nothing without your relations. All your kin--human, non-human, plant, animal, place, blood, water--all these familial links contain your thinking and character, the things you have always imagined to be occurring inside your fabulous individual mind.

-----

It is a Law of relationality that you can only learn from the land. The first relation is between land and people, and the second relation is between people and people. The second is contingent on the first.

And I pulled this one passage to quote from the book:

Splitting his gaze between the starlight and the firelight, the only conclusion he could muster was that everything in nature, which meant everything everywhere, was more intricate and indecipherable than an outcast man on an obscure island could possibly fathom. The thought was a surrender yet in its wake trailed a peculiar solace, a sudden disburdening: if the questions couldn't be answered then the strain of asking them must be futile. After a while he laid himself down in a soft hollow of sand, still listening to her sing as his eyelids slipped closed.

Let go of asking the unanswerable; most things you will never know.

Finally, from their About page:

you do not have to drift alone

we were made to congregate

with other complex organisms

drops of the cosmos

stuck together on earth

in a whirling multicellularity

called love

That might be my new favorite poem.

peace comes from

being able to flow with others

follow your doubt

we are subject to powers far beyond

our ability to summarize or understand

the moon is the

body's susceptibility to other bodies

I am a psithurist

what view of human nature is informing my thoughts

necessary to creating a more positive world

in dismissing children, adults fail to recognize

the potential of people

all is transitional

whirling to find each other

the more certain someone is, the less likely they are to change

curiosity begins where certainty breaks down

beliefs can be revised without the self being threatened

answers with calibrated uncertainty

there is always more to know

you are an inspired collection of chemistry and story

it's an ongoing dance

stories are best encountered on their own terms

let go of asking the unanswerable;

most things you will never know

we were made to congregate in a whirling multicellularity called love