PROMISES TO MYSELF • Promise #12 • December 18. 2009 • CREATE FEARLESSLY • I promise to follow the creative impulse to innovation. • “mary anne, pursue the natural progression toward unknown form.” • Looking into this day this might mean – experiment with unfamiliar materials, take an unknown road, make something utterly unlike my patterns.
“fly on the wings of possibility.” - mary anne radmacher -
“…what is real is not the exterior but the idea, the essence of things.” Constantin Brancusi
PROMISES TO MYSELF • Promise #11 • December 17, 2009 • EMBRACE INTER-CONNECTEDNESS • I promise to extend myself to strangers. • “mary anne, have the openness to allow a stranger to become a friend.” • Looking into this day this might mean – engage in unexpected exchange, reach out to a “friend of a friend,” broaden your circle.
“the greatest life lessons may come from people you have yet to meet.” – mar –
“each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.” - anais nin –
Reflections on Promise #11. Somehow, in these recent days, many of my significant lessons are woven into origami. The patterns, the visual unlikelihood, the stretch of imagination asking, “A piece of flat paper did that?” The inter-connectedness of the origami folds strike me as symbolic of the complex layers and folds of our days. Crease, fold, harsh straight line, each flat building upon flat fold until shaken or the strength of breath is applied. With breath or stretch there is magic. Form recognized. What was flat, unfamiliar, becomes a bird in flight. This calls to mind those AHA moments – when all the murky, disconnected complexities line up in magnificent order to say, “This is the lesson I have been creating for you. THIS is a lasting, difficult beauty for your life.”
PROMISES TO MYSELF • Promise #9 • December 15, 2009 • NEW QUESTIONS • I promise to ask fresh questions all day long. •
“mary anne, learn essential things by making irreverent inquiry.” • Looking into the day this might mean – with eyes of wonder look at old things in new ways, be relentlessly curious, look long in the mirror.
“It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers.” James Thurber • “Learn to love the questions themselves…” Rilke
HOW? MIGHT your day be different if you made a promise to yourself and kept it throughout this day?
PROMISES TO MYSELF • Promise #8 • December 14, 2009 • DEEP BELIEFS (ONE THING) • I promise to connect to my deepest beliefs and act on my ONE THING. • “mary anne, in spite of circumstances, be buoyed by your ONE THING.” • Looking into the day this might mean – being connected to my beliefs/meaning in all my actions. Prepare and package holiday gifts with love, allow my intentions their practical application in the day and be encouraged, in the large, by my intentions, not discouraged in the small, by disappointments.
E.B. White said, “I get up every morning determined to both change the world and have one hell of a good time.” In the words of Rumi I find this treasure, “There is ONE THING we all must do. If we do everything else but that one thing, we will be lost. And if we do nothing else but that one thing, we will have lived a glorious life.”
PROMISES TO MYSELF • December 9, 2009 • Promise #3 • COURAGEOUSLY UNCONVENTIONAL • I promise to behave/think outside habitual structures. • “mary anne, you are unlimited in your ability to be inventive.” • Looking into the day this might mean – writing/working in bed instead of my desk, asking for help when I’d do it myself self, delivering different messages to friends, surprising the guests (& myself) at tonight’s lecture.
REFLECTIONS on Promise #2. • Friends trump almost everything. • Friends are the UTMOST of all priority. • Distractions got written on little cards and put in a pile of “to be done later.” Very effective.
PROMISES TO MYSELF • December 8, 2009 • Promise #2 • UTMOST PRIORITY • I promise to act on my identified, most significant priorities. • “mary anne, attribute measurable, specific aims to your entire day and let the sparkly distractions fly by.” • looking at my day this might mean – be flexible, remain undeterred by distraction, use the hourglass to time focus on a project, restore and renew throughout the day with water, stretching and music.
REFLECTIONS on Promise #2. • Friends trump almost everything. • Friends are the UTMOST of all priority. • Distractions got written on little cards and put in a pile of “to be done later.” Very effective.
