Through the Prism: We Plant Potential Realities

we plant potential realities
hoping to be intertwined in the phenomena of coexistence

success and failure are fluid constructs
value is situational and relational

play a game of noticing, questioning, and adapting
inhabit the space between what you know and what you don't
embrace a life of perpetual transition, a generative series of experiments

discard the unrealistic expectation of always being at your best
life is made of cycles of being lost and finding ourselves again
respect your natural rhythms
we grow in circles

act in harmony with the flow of life

On a near-daily basis while doing the dishes during this time of year, I get to watch hummingbirds feed at the honeysuckle flowers on the fence outside the window behind our kitchen sink. It always adds a small dose of happiness to my day.

I recently learned that honeysuckle is considered a destructively invasive species for the way it overgrows other plants. While I don't find that information particularly notable or relevant for my own personal use, I'm sure it's good for me to have the awareness. The house we bought 10-15 years ago has three honeysuckle bunches growing along that section of fence, though they haven't spread or changed significantly over the time I've observed them. Perhaps they're a different variety than the harmfully invasive type.

I don't find the information that honeysuckle is "bad" particularly notable or relevant, yet the comment lingers in my mind. Learning of honeysuckle's dark side impacted me because it changed my framework for thinking about the plant, the basic way I view and understand it. It shifted my worldview.

I have a vague memory, unmoored from location or context, from when I was very young, of being with my mom when she introduced me to the plant for the first time. We were in a yard or park and, seeing a large, flowery plant on the border fence, Mom exclaimed, "Oh, honeysuckle!" She was clearly delighted. She told me you could pluck off the blossoms and suck the sweet nectar from them for a treat. Then she demonstrated a few times, projecting enjoyment, and helped me try a few.

I don't think I've ever sucked honeysuckle nectar since, yet that memory has lingered as a foundational encounter with a bit of unexpected magic. Something so ordinary that could delight us so simply. A chance happening across a secret bit of sweetness. And a part of me has always associated those flowers with that feeling. You never know when you might stumble on a magical moment; the possibility always exists.

Learning to think of that same source of magic as potentially harmful and destructive complicates my feelings, adds layers and complexity to my internal narrative. Yet it doesn't ruin my association so much as make me appreciate even more the truth that wonderful things can also be bad--and bad things can also be wonderful--depending on context, intensity, and circumstances. Everything depends on how it relates to its surroundings. Does it fit and mutually benefit or does it compete and cause harm? The value of honeysuckle, like everything else, is situational and relational.

The problem with the feed algorithms is they suffer from short attention spans, short-term thinking, and narrow, myopic vision--they can only focus on a couple of things at a time, and every time something shiny and new comes along some currently existing thing is dropped in its place. They don't allow you to build depth and breadth in what they show you, a wide range of diverse and eclectic interests. They just want to intensely inundate you with sameness and keep blinders on you.

[Younger], age 10, walking out of the kitchen with the breakfast plate I made him (and thus a bit muffled), "Thank you, oh father and God."

"You're welcome. But not God, just father."

"No, what I said was 'father of gods.'"

"Ah, well that's okay then."

In the late 80s, my small town Kansas high school had a few computers in a corner of the typewriter room. I spent many of my free hours after school pecking away at the keyboard trying to reproduce the D&D character sheets that were for sale, as I preferred my own customized versions. Coordinating dashes and lines to make borders for text boxes, calculating the number of spacebar taps to align things when spit out of the dot matrix printer, all on a black screen with green text.

I've never told the boys that story, but now they're playing D&D themselves. Pre-printed character sheets are cheap, plentiful, and standard. And [Younger], just like I did, prefers to make his own customized versions for his characters. Perhaps it's genetic.

“We plant potential realities” is from How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu, of which I wrote:

A moving meditation on death, grief, love, connection, family, and hope in the form of a mosaic collection of lightly interconnected, inter-generational stories. A familiar world in the near future changing dramatically in response to a global plague and the impacts of climate change. The stories of scientists working on various cures and adaptations in response to the tragedies. Euthanasia theme parks for children and resorts for adults who want to enjoy their final days. Pursuit of space travel to escape a ravaged planet. It's not about those situations, though--its about the people living through those situations. The comedian who finds a niche hosting families at the theme park. The scientist developing human-compatible pigs to use for replacement organs and body parts who comes to think of one of his subjects as his son. Many others; many perspectives on how people deal with mortality. This is a gentle, compassionate book about what it means to be human in the midst of tumult and darkness.

In the context of the book, "we plant potential realities" is said by an actual world creator from a race of immortal space beings who literally grow planets and the life on them. But I like the phrase as a much more everyday thought: because we are in relationship with others and the world around us--not to mention ourselves--our every action and choice impacts who who are later, other people, and our environments. Most impacts are so common and miniscule we don't notice them, but they add to the flow of the future; we have a hand in shaping the state of things. What we "plant" now will grow into something later. We are constantly choosing how we want to nudge the direction of future potential realities.

We plant potential realities.

From 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: poems, koans, subterranean currents of thought and feeling that over and over surprise us, invite us into deeper conversation with each other and with ourselves, delight us with what staggeringly different things two minds can make of the same material, yet how kindred in underlying spirit.

I particularly appreciate the two most recent offerings:

we can't disentangle
experience from loss
for living is a fatal activity
in which there is no always
but in the wild current of presence
encountering time
through change after change

what could be more human
than hoping to be enough
hoping to be intertwined
in the landscape of the other
forests dense with questions
phenomena of coexistence
breathing to be known

From Breathing to Be Known.

They both speak to the book that follows--and the rest of this post.

Of Tiny Experiments: How to Live Freely in a Goal-Obsessed World by Anne-Laure Le Cunff:

Embrace a life of perpetual transition--not a frightening limbo, but a generative series of experiments.

In close partnership with the popular concept of having a growth mindset is Le Cunff's advocacy for living with an experimental mindset. This guidebook explains what that is and offers practical, actionable advice for how to achieve it, a well-balanced pairing of theory and implementation. How to live with systematic curiosity and see life as an ongoing quest to try new things and learn from the results, the trial-and-error approach modeled by the scientific method. Her section titles, in order:

Pact: Commit to Curiosity
Act: Practice Mindful Productivity
React: Collaborate with Uncertainty
Impact: Grow with the World

She reframes the purpose of growth and the meaning of success as not striving to become the best in a competitive climb to the top but as a quest for generativity: a psychological principle that emphasizes using your personal growth to positively impact the world around you. That means learning to have a deeper sense of time, dance with disruption, and learn in public, among other things.

This book is both insightful and wise. Highly recommended.

It's almost impossible to fail when you see everything as an experiment. In a life of experimentation, there is no wrong choice, either. A pact isn't a destination. It's a path you walk to discover more about yourself and the world. Success and failure are fluid constructs, not fixed labels.

The only failure is to confuse mindless movement with mindful momentum. As long as you keep on adapting, learning, and growing, you are winning.

From above:

we can't disentangle
experience from loss
for living is a fatal activity
in which there is no always
but in the wild current of presence
encountering time
through change after change

what could be more human
than hoping to be enough
hoping to be intertwined
in the landscape of the other
forests dense with questions
phenomena of coexistence
breathing to be known

And more from the book:

Life is made of cycles of being lost and finding ourselves again.

-----

Each day I wake up excited to discover what new crossroads life will present to me. I'm always on the lookout for new experiments. I'm not rushing to get to a specific destination. I'm playing a different game: a game of noticing, questioning, and adapting.

-----

Enrich your life with systematic curiosity--a conscious commitment to inhabit the space between what you know and what you don't, not with fear and anxiety but with interest and openness. Systematic curiosity provides an unshakable certitude in your ability to grow even when the exact path forward is uncertain, with the knowledge that your actions can align with your most authentic ambitions.

-----

Our brain is uncomfortable in the in-betweens. Just like a sentry on high alert, the brain prepares for potential threats. Uncertainty becomes fuel for anxiety. In fact, uncertainty has been found to cause more stress than inevitable pain. When we don't know what's coming, we overthink every possibility and we conjure worst-case scenarios. Although we would like to relinquish control and soar through the skies, we often find ourselves suffering from uneasiness, or even white-knuckled terror.

-----

We need to shift the focus from what we do with our time to how we experience each moment--what you might call mindful productivity. It's a simple idea, that making the most of our time isn't about doing more but about being more: more present, more engaged, and more attuned to the quality of our experiences.

-----

Managing your physical resources ultimately boils down to discarding the unrealistic expectation of always being "at your best." Energy naturally fluctuates; attempting to maintain a perpetual peak is not just impossible but detrimental to your well-being. Respecting your natural rhythms can lead you to have a healthier relationship to work as well as increased productivity and creativity.

-----

If you ask yourself exploratory questions in a nonjudgmental way and interpret the answers constructively, procrastination can be a helpful indicator, shifting your internal monologue from self-blame to self-discovery.

-----

When we use trial and error, we set in motion a series of growth loops where progress emerges in conversation with our environment. Each cycle adds a layer of learning to how we understand ourselves and the world around us. Instead of an external destination, our aspirations become fuel for transformation. We don't go in circles, we grow in circles.

-----

"Failure" is inherent in the trial and error process: it is not feared but embraced as a tool that directs us toward the next step in our journey of discovery.

-----

Our economy is built not on the notion of enough but on the notion of more. Bigger, better, higher, faster. . . .

When you're not playing a game of leveling up and chasing linear goals, persistence--showing up consistently over a long period of time, long enough that you can start seeing the compound interest in your work--can be a powerful differentiator.

-----

Taoism talks about wu wei, which can be translated as "effortless action." This doesn't mean inaction but rather acting in harmony with the flow of life, without force or resistance. . . .

Western science is catching up to the Eastern spiritual teachings on the benefits of surrendering to the present moment and choosing to flow with the currents of life. Studies show that constantly trying to fight and fix the things that go wrong in life can lead to chronic stress, and that one of the hallmarks of psychological well-being is the ability to fluidly adapt to change--not to resist chaos, but to embrace it.

-----

Always err on the side of acceptance rather than control. Ride the wave of chaos instead of vainly trying to contain it. The point is not to create a master plan that gives you the illusion of power over the situation; rather, it is to deescalate the consequences of any setback so you can move forward rather than give up.

-----

Researchers have found that flow states happen more easily in group activities than in solitary ones. . . .

The interdependent nature improves the focus of each individual. And even though solitary flow is quite enjoyable, studies have found that the intrinsic reward of shared focus alongside others makes sinking into that optimal state even more pleasurable.

-----

Learning in public requires connecting with other humans to explore, learn, and grow together. It's a form of iterative learning, where mistakes and errors are valuable opportunities for improvement. As such, it is messy. . . .

This is an extreme form of vulnerability, which has been found to foster a deeper sense of connection, trust, and empathy. . . .

Growth often comes from struggle, frustration confusion--but we usually keep those moments private for fear of being exposed as a "fraud." We worry that others will judge us. . . . Instead, share your real work in real time--the raw stuff, not the highlights reel. . . .

Share the lessons from an experiment that failed.

To do all this, you'll need to become comfortable saying I don't know and asking others for input. Ultimately, learning in public strengthens your thinking by exposing your ideas to diverse perspectives early on. This can save you precious time and money. It also builds public trust and engagement. . . .

Above all, welcome new inputs instead of just promoting your own point of view. . . .

Learn the art of give-and-take--listening as much as sharing, valuing diverse voices, and recognizing each contribution, however small. When you learn in public, you create an open playbook welcoming new players to advance the game beyond what you first imagined, sparking new connections, sharing both the credit and the challenges.

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To be successful at any age, on any path, and on your own terms, focus not on legacy but on generativity. Generativity is a psychological principle that emphasizes using your personal growth to positively impact the world around you. . . .

Instead of focusing on what you leave behind, generativity is about what you give now--actively contributing to your community, creating opportunities for others, and sharing your experiences in ways that enable collective growth.

Generativity isn't measured by scale but by the depth of connection in the here and now. It is built around the conversations you have, the positive impact of the work you produce, the lives you touch. Unlike legacy, which often fixates on leaving an outsized enduring mark, generativity is found in smaller everyday interactions and contributions.

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Focus on the present moment and ask yourself: How can I use my skills and experiences to positively impact the people around me right now?

we plant potential realities

hoping to be intertwined in the phenomena of coexistence

success and failure are fluid constructs

value is situational and relational

play a game of noticing, questioning, and adapting

inhabit the space between what you know and what you don't

embrace a life of perpetual transition, a generative series of experiments

discard the unrealistic expectation of always being at your best

life is made of cycles of being lost and finding ourselves again

respect your natural rhythms

we grow in circles

act in harmony with the flow of life

I particularly resonated with Le Cunff's concept of "growth loops," that learning happens in cycles and each rotation around, revisiting familiar territory, leads to a deepening of knowledge--what we already know grows over time as we use and revisit it. It gains more dimension and meaning, becomes more connected and integrated.

When we use trial and error, we set in motion a series of growth loops where progress emerges in conversation with our environment. Each cycle adds a layer of learning to how we understand ourselves and the world around us. Instead of an external destination, our aspirations become fuel for transformation. We don't go in circles, we grow in circles.

I have been using the metaphor of spirals and helixes for the same idea.

It Makes You Sick: The Attacks on Health, Healthcare, and Care

I've come to realize that a lot of the important things are not just facts to know the way you learned the multiplication table in fifth grade. They're fundamental truths that somehow need to sink into you to become part of your operating equipment, your values and premises, and they're often pretty simple and familiar. That's why they're often about seeing old things in a new way or having a well-known aphorism settle into in your bones or become your compass. . . .

I suddenly felt in a new way how the land and the people aren't separate, and how too many people on too many parts of that land are being sickened by breathing in industrial pollution . . . That in damaging the land and contaminating the air we were harming the people. Of course I'd known that forever – since the dense smog of Los Angeles, since partly dispelled by good legislation and industrial decline – was a presence in my youth. But it hit me with a vividness that was new. . . .

I've occasionally argued that the real divide in this country and beyond is better described as connectors and disconnectors, the relational and the isolated, than left and right. As Martin Luther King Jr. famously (and repeatedly; he knew a good phrase when he had one) said, “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” . . .

The health of any individual is inseparable from the health of the society in which they live.

From Rebecca Solnit's Meditations in an Emergency blog.

And from the entry for "Echo" in the book Consolations II: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words by David Whyte.

Repetition through echo also reflects our need to admit things we could not admit to, the very first time we heard them. In Greek drama, when the gods spoke on stage, it was always understood that, heard directly from the god's mouth, the message was too overwhelming for those listening in the audience to take in. The words of the gods could only be comprehended and digested after they had been heard again, after what had been said had been echoed and repeated by the chorus. In the reverberating echo of the truth, the chorus mercifully steps the truth down to our level so that we may understand it and then through repetition, amplifies it to transform our lives. . . .

The more loops we complete, the more we grow. We grow in circles.

In the end, philosophy is the art of linking timeless questions together to frame them in compelling ways. The answer is not as important, in the same way that finding “the answer” to death is nonsensical. What you want to do in a philosophical essay is to show how one view leads to perspective shifts in another, which then allows for profundity to seep in. And by doing this regularly, you’ll develop the intuition required to avoid trite points at all costs.

― Lawrence Yeo of More To That

At the end of Tiny Experiments, Le Cunff includes a link to a "bonus chapter" that she left out of the book as not a perfect fit. Here are some selections from it:

The Art of Mind Gardening

Just as a gardener sows seeds, waters them, and harvests the fruit of their labor, we too can plant inspiring ideas in our minds, nurture them, and watch them blossom into new thoughts. Much like gardens, our minds require consistent attention and, most importantly, intention. This realization was the birth of “mind gardening”—a proactive approach to cultivating our mental landscape. . . .

Mind gardening is a fluid, bottom-up practice of note-taking which starts with capturing fleeting thoughts, observations, and insights. Whether jotted down physically or digitally, these notes act as the soil in which ideas germinate. Instead of letting them rot as if in a dumping ground, you will regularly revisit those notes and proactively seek connections between ideas to generate new ones. Over time, as these notes accumulate and intertwine, they form a dense garden of thoughts, allowing for deeper insights and creating an unlimited source of inspiration.

Mind gardeners are known by many names: scholars, Renaissance people, expert-generalists, scientific detectives, philomaths (literally, “lovers of learning”). . . .

Information is constantly being pushed at us. We need a practice that builds intentionality into our learning process, so that we’re actively making choices about what we plant, grow, and harvest. . . .

1. Curate: Planting seeds of inspiration . . .

Think of it as choosing the best ingredients for a nutritious and delicious information diet. The secret lies in recognizing which seeds resonate with your interests or complement your existing knowledge. Some ideas, no matter how intriguing, are like exotic plants—fun novelties but not likely to root and flower. By being selective of the content you consume, you ensure that what you plant in your mind garden has the potential to grow, intertwine with other ideas, and ultimately blossom into new, exciting thoughts. . . .

2. Connect: Cultivating a network of insights . . .

This may be as simple as spending time every few days or weeks reading through all the notes you have aggregated—seeing which ones still resonate, looking for patterns, and seeing how individual notes relate or contrast with each other. What is important is that you spend time actively engaging with what you collected. You can do this by opening your notes, and asking yourself questions such as: What does this idea remind me of? How does idea A impact idea B? What do ideas A and B have in common? How are ideas A and B different? . . .

3. Create: Harvesting new ideas . . .

These can take many forms—a new perspective, a solution to a problem, or a system to design your projects. Putting these insights to use can be as simple as incorporating an idea into a piece of work, crafting a quick memo for your team, creating a template for yourself, or testing a concept in a conversation with a friend. Maybe you compile a list of your favorite quotes from the past month or you write a book recommendation. The aim is to become an active contributor of valuable insights; a transmitter rather than just a receiver. . . .

Our brain is not designed to create ideas out of thin air. Instead, it’s a pattern-seeking machine. Brain scans show that parts of the brain tied to reward are activated when discovering relationships between disparate information. In short, the brain is wired to make fresh associations, the core mechanism of combinational creativity. Mind gardening is merely a tool for these innate capacities to flourish. . . .

Mind gardening fosters perpetual discovery, turning lifelong learning into a weird and wonderful adventure, where you can envision new solutions, new learning opportunities, and even new careers. Much like gardening itself, a mind garden takes dedication to bear fruit. But the effort compounds as your notes bloom into generative thoughts. With consistent tending, your curiosity will develop into ideas that benefit both yourself and others.

Mind gardening can help you transform chaos into insight. When you shift from passive consumer to active cultivator, scattered tidbits of information turn into a web of interrelated ideas, ripe for sharing with others. When you landscape your thoughts through curiosity, the noise of the modern world becomes a springboard to creativity. Just grab your tools, pick your plot, and let your imagination grow wild in the garden of your mind.

In the context of How High We Go in the Dark, "we plant potential realities" is said by an actual world creator from a race of immortal space beings who literally grow planets and the life on them. But I like the phrase as a much more everyday thought: because we are in relationship with others and the world around us--not to mention ourselves--our every action and choice impacts who who are later, other people, and our environments. Most impacts are so common and miniscule we don't notice them, but they add to the flow of the future; we have a hand in shaping the state of things. What we "plant" now will grow into something later. We are constantly choosing how we want to nudge the direction of future potential realities.

In last post, I shared some thoughts about leadership that I composed to share with others at my workplace, including:

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.

Right after I shared it, Reweaving the Web posted a poem that in my mind connects perfectly.

From The Golden Lining.

"We abandon each other through scattered instances documented to monitor threats, shaping previous failures into active hazards."

To me that speaks powerfully to trust and expectations, to the nature of self-fulfilling prophecies and the tendency for people to react to how they are treated. A self-fulfilling prophecy is a prediction that causes itself to become true; the process by which a person’s expectations lead them to unconsciously behave in ways that confirm the expectations and make them a reality. Because their mindset shapes their actions, they inadvertently cause the outcome they predicted.

We plant potential realities.

Selah.

According to the AI embedded in Google search, Selah is a Hebrew word most commonly found in the Psalms of the Bible. While its exact etymology remains a mystery, scholars generally interpret it as an instruction to pause, reflect, or praise. It appears 74 times in the Hebrew Bible, typically marking a musical interlude or a moment to stop and consider the words just spoken.

"A musical interlude or a moment to stop and consider the words just spoken."

A lovely thought.

I bring it up because a work of art with that title recently came across my feed. An artist I'd never heard of before, Matt Moberg, posting a painting he was putting up for auction. You can see more at Matt Moberg's Post for "Selah," a 36x36 Acrylic and Oil on Canvas for sale at Matt Moberg Art.

Moberg introduced the painting with a long free-verse poem that I really appreciate. I'm not going to entirely steal his words, but I'm reproducing an abridgement that pulls out the bits I find most essential.

I don't understand these folk,
the ones who carry God
the way men carry canes they do not need —
less for support than for pointing. . . .

And always so sure. . . .

It's in me too,
and I am tired of the little judge
I become
when I'm afraid. . . .

We are such little catastrophes of longing.

We cry in grocery store parking lots
with melting ice cream in the back seat,
because someone we love
spoke in a tone
that found the basement of the body.

We reread text messages
like monks bending over ancient manuscripts,
searching for proof
that we have not been quietly removed
from the country of Good.

We forget the thing that mattered.
We lose the thing in our hand.
We ruin what we were begging for.

We hand fear the microphone
then blame love for the speech. . . .

We are one bad night away from texting,
Are you mad at me?
to someone who is only asleep.

Think of that.

Think of how close we are,
always,
to mistaking rest
for abandonment. . . .

And still we speak
as though angels briefed us
in a side room.

Still we pontificate like God pulled us aside privately
to clarify the meaning of the universe over appetizers.

As if eternity were a parlor trick.

As if grace were a chandelier
we could describe
because once, briefly,
we stood beneath it.

As if heaven had a side entrance
and we alone knew the code.

How did we become so certain? . . .

Who taught us
to confuse volume with truth,
sharpness with holiness,
a closed fist for the keeping of fire?

Who told you you had to be right in order to be good? . . .

And yet we insist that we have the Truth on matters like
heaven, bodies, sin, mercy,
justice, gender, eternity,
whether Apple is a buy or the Fed will blink,
and the curriculum
someone else’s heartbreak
was apparently assigned to teach them.

Selah.

Maybe the holiest thing is not loud certainty.
Maybe the holiest thing is the quiet softening.

The breath before the answer.
The hand unclenching.
The sentence that begins,
Tell me more.

Maybe God is not waiting
for us to win the debate.

Maybe God is waiting
for us to notice
the sparrow on the fence,
the soup on the stove,
the friend still answering,
the body still breathing,
the morning returning
with no guarantee
except its own golden arrival.

Maybe God is less interested in being defended
than in being encountered.

Less interested in our raised voices
than in our lowered guard.

Less interested in the flag we plant
than the shoes we remove.

So come.

Leave the argument still chewing on itself in the kitchen.
Leave the last word face down on the table.
Let someone else win the echo.

You do not have to answer
every bell your fear rings.

Come outside in this unsolved world.

There is still jasmine climbing the fence.

Still rain making music on the trash cans.

Still the neighbor’s dog
believing every morning
is Easter.

Come and see how
the sky is doing that impossible thing again
where it holds everything
and asks for nothing.

There is still a world
that has not learned
our hatred of being unfinished.

Come be unfinished here.
Come be unsure.
Come be the kind of small that finally fits inside mercy.
Come be human.
Come be quiet enough to hear the life beneath the life.

Come stand here
without an answer,
and let awe
do the work
that argument never could.

Let it soften
what certainty hardened.

Let it loosen
what fear clenched.

Let it make of you
not someone who knows more,
but someone who kneels better
inside the life we are already in.

(Please go to his site and read the entire piece.)

"Always err on the side of acceptance rather than control." Anne-Laure Le Cunff in Tiny Experiments.

I particularly love We are such little catastrophes of longing. Such a simple yet insightful thought that explains much about human nature and behavior. Life is situational and relational.