What would you hope would be the mark you left? My grandmother was a really important influence in my life, and when she passed many years ago, I told my cousins, “ I was her favorite.” The 37 grandchildren at the wake all disagreed and said that they were the favorite. I am convinced that the five other grandkids who didn’t make it to the celebration of life would say the same. Imagine that influence as your legacy.

Maybe, you come from a much smaller tree and/or are not connected to a clan; how would you be remembered? Do you want friends and colleagues to mourn your passing or cheer the amazing things you did?

Is your vocation your mark? Does the work or the way you do it have a purpose bigger than profit, or is profit the way you resonate from the grave?

If you have 36 hours left, would you start something new, finish something undone, repair something broken, or mope about the misfortune?

I am inordinately comfortable with death being part of life and am not interested in the quantity of living when traded for quality of life. I know I have a best-before date. I just don’t have it printed on my forehead (that would make everything so much simpler).

My pathological quest to leave an imprint stems from a theological mythology that I no longer prescribe to, but the baggage of meaning is still strong. My ego is strong and leaning toward a delusion of grandeur, so I strive to make a big provocative dent in the fabric of time and relationships.

My desired legacy is that I am remembered as a curious, counter-certainty, creator who consistently challenged the comfortable way and chased new ways to live in community together.

B

In the three years that I have been away from this blog, I experienced much of the same stress and distress that most people in the world lived through. The lockdowns and restrictions curbed social interaction, dampened enthusiasm, reduced motivation, and limited adventure. Sure, we made an effort to spend more time outside and were largely successful. We hiked and snowshoed, biked, and walked. We saw wildlife and wildflowers. I had my fill of Google Meets, MS Meeting, and Zoom and was exhausted by the polarity of opinion and the rigor of isolation.

And then, things reopened and like someone who has been doing a dry February for 2 years or a fast for two months, I overindulged and overdid the return to what I thought I missed. We partied like it was 2019 – good food, good drinks, and good times. But I wasn’t filled. There was a void that didn’t get filled.

I realized that I was starved for dialogue and discussion and debate. I wanted dissent around topics other than personal liberty or personal choice. I craved philosophy and practice in an unequal measure. I needed to be challenged for something meaningful, not how I chose to be vaccinated or why I made that choice but rather a meaningful examination of the culture and community and why in the midst of polarity everything sounds like an echo.

I have spent a lot of my time testing ideas and trying new things, in my daily work. I have learned that wicked personal circumstances require direct, personal intervention. I realize that in order to restore people, young and older, from trauma, stress, mental health, and addiction we need a combination of medical treatment and narrative mediation. When folks are ready to be restored they need assistance in restorying. Attachments need to be regained or replaced, accountability needs to be mandatory and self-regulated, forgiveness needs to be bidirectional, and hard work must be celebrated and rewarded.

Over the next months, I am going to restore an old habit of writing daily and publishing often. I would love if this was a dialogue but if you aren’t ready to write a comment or question a premise then I hope that something here fills your ears and your head, and your heart.

B

This week’s post on Vocal

On the road less traveled, life becomes an adventure. We spend so much time planning to live that we miss the opportunity to experience our existence on our terms.

https://motivation.media/life-isn-t-meant-to-be-straight-lines

When we play everything safely, are we lengthening mediocre existence? Is adding days to our lives what is important? Should we be taking some chances and adding life to our days?

I suppose just by asking that question; I am exposing my bias. I believe we should step over the imaginary line every chance that we get. I am not suggesting skydiving but not ruling it out.

Every day, I am presented with opportunities, most of them free, that challenge my public circle of comfort. I meet new people who are trying new things when I go to places that aren’t my regular haunts. My views are stretched by reading authors and magazines that don’t fit my usual library. If I have the opportunity to walk alongside someone who I disagree with and ask lots of clarifying questions, I get to see the world from a different viewpoint.

On days that I don’t feel like riding my bike, I try to ride it 5 km further to see what is on the other side of my destination. If I am feeling rushed, I try to slow down and breathe more deeply. When I am anxious, I make space to step away rather than instinctively charge ahead.

I swing on swings and slide down slides whenever the opportunity appears. I play with children and ask questions of older strangers. I present ridiculously impossible queries to friends and colleagues and attempt to leave my preconditioned bias outside the discussion.

On frigid days or muggy summer afternoons, I agnostically spend time in the elements appreciating whatever is presented rather than surrendering to the inertia of excuses to stay inside.

Taking risks is about embracing a small unknown nugget and accepting what follows. When we do anything for the first time, we receive a little prospect of unexpected. I always feel something when my boundaries are poked. I am better for new experiences even when they don’t seem favorable.

Convenience and comfort are poor metrics for a life lived well. Limiting what we hear, say, do and who we live life with reduces the quality of our existence.

Disclaimer “Don’t ever, even as a joke, put your head in a lion’s mouth” but when you are presented with the prospect of seeing a lion, I recommend spending some time watching her behavior. Maybe there is a lesson to be learned.

Even in my embrace of ambiguity or possibly because of my quest for uncertainty, I have strong opinions loosely held. My position on the environment, economics, politics, family dynamics would lean center left on a traditional spectrum, mostly. My views on some other social issues are muddled and huddled in the middle and on some other issues, especially around justice, I lean into the right.

When I am talking about conservation with most of my friends and colleagues, we congregate around science, ecology, greening, and personal responsibility. The confirmation bias of my huddle is strong, and so I try to venture into the territory of other camps and hear what and why they understand and believe. My belief that we are living through unprecedented climate change and that our actions are the most significant contributor was formed by research, reflection, conversation, and personal observation but I hold my conclusions loosely enough to enter into dialogue with others. (Dialogue is the process of sharing ideas, opinions, viewpoints, and facts so everyone is heard and we can all leave having learned something.) Sometimes the nudge is less quantitative than qualitative, sometimes the shift is more about trust, and mostly we all come closer to understanding what the other is thinking.
Over the past four years, I have moved from a self-described recovering post-modern fundamentalist to a fully outed atheist. The move was painful intellectually, and I needed to break down some significant brick walls to get ready to build a different foundation. I still honor people of faith and will participate in the traditions intellectually as a show of support, and they have come to see that I believe lots of the same things as them, without the overarching narrative of God and salvation.
When I am open to the possibility that what I believe or understand may not be entirely accurate or correct, I allow space for the as yet unimagined (my brain hasn’t yet imagined it). I can’t arrive at that Eureka Moment if I remain stubbornly locked in my own prison of certainty.
Have you taken a certainty break this week? Are you actively exploring something that doesn’t fit with your biases? I am sure that the thought of shaking your foundation sounds a bit overwhelming and crazy, but I encourage you to give it a try.

B

Source: Rangeland expansion justified

Are you optimistic, pessimistic, neutralistic? Is the world abundant, scarce or three bears just right? Is your view of the world about how you perceive the truth, your disposition, and/or your experiences? I can find myself feeling ‘hell-in-a-handbasket’ like my father, my grandfather and I am sure on occasion my grandchildren or I can deliberately expect and demand a different perspective from myself and different results from the world. My tendencies are a matter of wiring and if I don’t want to continue wallowing in self-pity I can undertake to rewire my brain to observe the magic, beauty, and mystery alongside the tragedy, hatred and vitriol.

For me, it begins with morning meditation. I use a guided application called “Simple Habits” and practice is the first activity I schedule after my feet hit the floor. It isn’t a spiritual exercise as much as a consciousness and mindfulness kick start. This morning’s meditation was about gratitude for discomfort and how the aches and pains I feel physically and emotionally are likely my body and brain attempting to protect me from additional harm. Without feeling the twinge in my left Achille’s tendon, I might run until something snaps. If I didn’t feel anxious, I might jump off the next cliff without some measure of investigation and reflection. If I didn’t feel regret for not saying something to a loved one in a time of trouble, I might become callous and distant.
I don’t have any chronic conditions that cause me distress do I am not sure how someone could feel grateful for that kind of infliction but I encourage you to take a moment to understand and appreciate your stress, aches, or anxiety. Don’t allow yourself to wallow in it and don’t just accept the situation if there are options to improve or dissipate them.

My tactics for reframing are ecological, entertaining, and explicit. If I want to change my patterns, thoughts or actions I need to be aware of the surroundings that I find myself in and the surroundings that fit with how I see the changed self I want to become. In order to be more grateful, I can’t be surrounded by ungrateful or selfish people. I need to be surrounded by light, love, and learning. I can’t continue doing the same things in the same places in the same way that brought me to the valley of distrust and disappointment. For the circumstances to change, I need to change my where and how and who. Escaping from stinking thinking is essential. It means that there are people in my life today that can’t be in my life tomorrow. There are places I need to stop going and actions that I must stop undertaking. We all have a preferred or imagined ecology that fulfills more of our aspirations and unfortunately, it won’t manifest itself. We need to seek it out through our actions.

I can be shallow and unfocused and unless the change process is fun, I know that I might retreat to the depths that I am trying to escape. Fun need not be onerous or expensive. Meeting with uplifting people for an activity, a meeting, a coffee, a walk will put a smile on my face even when or because the conversation is an adventure. I met with three friends this morning for ninety minutes and we ranged across the sublime and inane to the profound and debatable. We laughed, we shared, we disagreed and we hugged. We expressed our gratitude for each other and the time spent and booked another gathering for a month from now. I left inspired, thankful and challenged. The stimulus of camaraderie and conversation caused neurons to fire against my hippocampus and began nurturing new pathways.

My final tactic; explicit is really an e word for intentional. ( I love alliteration so much that I always trying to catch it in my lists – ecological, entertaining, and explicit). In my worldview, nothing happens organically. Or nothing will predictably happen without intention. I must invest my resources and time in creating a V2.0 or V11.5 of me and I need to be vested in the outcome.

“Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative and creation, there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too.

All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favour all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance which no man could have dreamed would have come his way.

Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now.” ~ Johann Wolfgang van Goethe

Make Today Remarkable, by choice,

Bob

The wide world is all about you: you can fence yourselves in, but you cannot forever fence it out. ~ JRR Tolkien

Start wide, expand further, and never look back. ~Arnold Schwarzenegger

Let’s not be narrow, nasty, and negative. ~ TS  Eliot

There is in true beauty, as in courage, something which narrow souls cannot dare to admire. ~ William Congreve

Certainty narrows, curiosity widens. ~ Bob McInnis

We live in a world of unparalleled possibilities yet more often than not we rely on the tried and true heuristics that worked yesterday and on all our yesterdays. Fear, laziness, complacency or ignorance convince us that there is ‘nothing new in this world’ that is worth exploring, worth trying, worth learning. In my not so humble opinion, there is everything new in this world, and I can soak it up, synthesize it, reflect on it and then reflect the as yet unimagined creation to those willing to see it.

My youngest grandson loves binoculars. At three, he prefers to look through them backward from how I use them. He ‘likes things far away’ better than close up. I have tried them both ways at his insistence and realize that I see more clearly having seen the tree and seen the leaves. Simply by adding one perspective widened my view of and appreciation for the world. If I had continued to bring things close, I wouldn’t have seen the forest.

When I read Robert Sapolsky, YH Harari, and Ali Bryan over the last few months, my perspective widened. When I investigated and booked a trek, my world became wider. (and when we climb the Via Feratta, it broadens). By looking at the world differently, we see a different world. When we read or listen to a new voice, our understanding gets broader. If I go somewhere and do something for the first time my experience of life is deeper.

I can be a creature of habit and choose to live narrowly, or I can opt for richness and surprise. Mediocrity lives and thrives in habitual practice, routine observations and rigid, echo chamber ideas.

This week, let’s explore getting wider and broader.
B

The Cultural Curiosity Daily will be a hodgepodge on some days and a treatise on others. If you are entertained, provoked, inspired, edified or angered by any of it you can respond with comments and as always you can ‘buy me a coffee.‘

In my not so humble opinion, relationships are complicated, exhilarating and require dedication and commitment. There is a theory that we basket our relationships into four categories; intimate, personal, social and public. I hold one person in my intimate basket, dozens in my personal, hundreds in my social and thousands in public. At the widest point, my commitment and dedication are lowest and so is the exhilaration and complexity.
Those in my personal basket are people who I care about; I care enough that when I am making a decision, I consider how my actions will impact them. We remain connected through an undocumented and unaudited reciprocity. We support each other; we listen for opportunities to offer sincere feedback, and we extend grace to each other when we screw up. It is hard to acknowledge and own the mishaps (maybe it is in all cases), but if I am open to accepting culpability,  the relationship remains authentic. If I am ducking for cover and denying involvement, the relationship is eroded.

In my intimate relationship that has survived and flourished for 43 years. All of the above is encapsulated; complicated, exhilarating, supportive, dedicated, grace and committed. But I believe that the reason that we have continued to work hard every day to live happily ever after is because we don’t want to disappoint each other. I have disappointed her and been disappointed, but I know that each day I ask myself “if I do this would it disappoint her?” 99.5% of the time the answer is “no” and 99.9% of the time when the answer is “yes,” I don’t make that choice.

My relationships are my responsibility, and I take seriously the role that continues to evolve and hold those close to me to a high standard.

Are your relationships healthy and reciprocal? Do you care and demonstrate that you care in equal measure? Are you willing and ready to step up and move to the next level?

Make Today Remarkable, for someone close  to you,

B

The Cultural Curiosity Daily will be a hodgepodge on some days and a treatise on others. If you are entertained, provoked, inspired, edified or angered by any of it you can respond with comments and as always you can ‘buy me a coffee.‘