“…an optimistic mind-set finds dozens of possible solutions for every problem that the pessimist regards as incurable.”
― Robert Anton Wilson

It’s a world of endless possibilities for us all, and I’m fascinated by this.   I’m fascinated by how a student that I help has gone from diving headfirst with great confidence into work of incredible bravery and breadth to feeling like anything he does will be wrong – by the hesitation in his keyboarding as he writes a sentence, corrects it, over-corrects it (adds a few commas because the feedback he’s gotten on work that came from his heart was that it needed more punctuation).   And now he’s going into high school and it’s time to make a “plan” for his life.   The first order of business might be healing up.   It interests me that one person will want to create and track their goals on a spreadsheet and another will want to make a visual mind-map.   Everything from a Descartian view of what’s real and meaningful to something like the moment when the fellow we were helping plan said that in his reality everything in life is cyclical and just goes round and round, and what’s needed is a stable centre, populated by those who care about him, and then everything else would take care of itself.   “Can you draw me that?”   And his mom said, of the process, that in the act of planning we are already creating the future we aspire to by leaning into it.  And then they talked about their spirits, like fluttering birds held lightly in their hands, flying off to do good in the world….

In such moments things turn, like the lines of poems, and the person who is facilitating becomes an enviable learner, accepting a gift of transformation.   How to put that on a spreadsheet is the thing and I do think it’s possible and perhaps even necessary, at least for me, to keep tracking these moments.

It’s one of the things I love about the work of Harold Jarche – his moving away from the assumptions about how we will be together and what planning might mean, and what networks and relationships might bring to our aspirations.  “Innovation,” says Jarche’s tagline on his blog, “is not so much about having ideas as making connections.”