Sunday Best – February 4, 2024
When I visited Japan last fall, I kept having flashbacks to my 20-year old self, the person I’d been when I first traveled there. Every Proustian taste and every recollected phrase pulled me into a strange parallel universe, where I was simultaneously then and now.
Then I happened upon this passage from Zora Neale Hurston, where Janie is reconnecting with her own self after a long separation.
Years ago, she had told her girl self to wait for her in the looking glass. It had been a long time since she remembered. Perhaps she’d better look… She took careful stock of herself, then combed her hair and tied it back up again. Then she starched and ironed her face, forming it into just what people wanted to see.
Friends, we’ve all left little bits and pieces along the pathways of our lives, breadcrumbs that we might follow to mark the way back to ourselves.
What might we find if we gathered them up,
re-membering as we go?
The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread, Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
– Derek Walcott, Love after Love
Sunday Best – January 28, 2024
Putting a name on a cloud doesn’t do anything to it – it doesn’t separate the cloud from the sky. – Alan Watts
This week at work I noticed so many efforts to name the clouds around us. A analyst struggled to create market estimates for a new technology that is just barely beginning to emerge. There were delays in deployment of a stunningly complex reporting protocol, one seemingly based on a premise that to name is to control. An executive tried to explain that their three different product lines were only separate on our spreadsheets, since in the real world they are all intertwined.
I truly love analysis, in almost every form. It brings a sense of agency in an uncertain world – and occasionally, real insight. The best part is when you can add a great new piece to the rest of the puzzle, and step back to take in the view.
However.
Dear ones,
perhaps,
sometimes,
instead of naming each cloud and trying to fix it in place,
we could just appreciate the sky.
Sunday Best – January 21, 2024
My college calculus professor used to say, “I know you got the answer right, but do you grok it?” He wanted us to feel the math in a way that went beyond the mechanics of the equations.
Then in a Buddhist retreat years ago, our teacher spent some time explaining the tiny spark of clarity that might result from our meditation. When he asked if we understood, everyone’s heads bobbed eagerly. Sadly he replied, “Oh, that’s too bad. If you think you understand it from my words, then I have explained it all wrong.”
And just this week, another wise teacher concluded an extended set of strategic discussions by imploring those of us in attendance, “Please, please, don’t explain it. The more explanation, the more misunderstanding.”
In each of these instances, we were trying to explore an idea that could only fully arise within the doing and the being – a concept that words could outline but never animate.
Friends, I hope we all can aim to become better communicators, clear of sight and full of heart and crisp of mind.
And beyond all that, whether in calculus or consciousness or community, may we save some space for the living that lies beyond language,
these deep wells of knowing where glimmers on the surface barely begin to reflect the splendors below.
Sunday Best – January 14, 2024
I had a hope-full talk with a dear friend this weekend, and as we parted I noted that I was encouraged by all that could be.
She grabbed my shoulders, looked me right in the eye, and added, “and by what already is.”
Dear friends, may we seed the future with our dearest dreams.
And may we recognize the sprouts that have already emerged,
the forests of our future.
Sunday Best – January 7, 2024
My whole team at work knows that when I say “oh, how clever!” it is usually not a compliment. It’s my own personal investment management version of “bless your heart.”
Whether in business or in life, we are not seeking cleverness. We’re not even seeking knowledge, or understanding. We are seeking wisdom.
I’ve been starting the year with John O’Donohue’s Anam Cara, and he notes, “there is a great difference between knowledge and wisdom… Wisdom is the way that you learn to decipher the unknown; and the unknown is our closest companion… Wisdom is the art of balancing the known with the unknown, the suffering with the joy; it is a way of linking the whole of life together in a new and deeper unity.”
Though I have underlined almost every passage of this book, new phrases hit me every time I read O’Donohue’s work. This time, it’s right in the middle of the quote above.
“The unknown is our closest companion.”
How wonderful, to be constantly snuggled up right next to the unknown.
And how terrifying, if our only tool for navigating is a puffed-up cleverness.
The search for wisdom keeps us curious. Humble. Whole.
Dear ones, may we be quick and clever with the small things, the simple and easily known.
But with the unknown – our closest companion – may we endeavor, eventually, to become wise.
I often find glimmers of wisdom by curling up with a good book. With that in mind, I’m glad to share my latest Honeybee reading list, with all best wishes for the new year.
Honeybee Book List – Winter 2023
