At no point in her life did my mother ever ask me about my work, nor, to my knowledge, did she ever read any of my three books. But in her final hours, something changed. It was the height of the pandemic and I was teaching an online course at Pacifica Graduate Institute. Sitting next…
Principles of Getting Messy: Teaching and learning are courageous. They take us into unknown places with unknown outcomes. Being a learner (letting yourself get messy) is what encourages creative insight to happen. There’s always possibility under the surface. It’s just that you need a certain way of looking to see it. From Getting Messy: A…
Albert Einstein said that imagination is the “highest form of research.” The Australian animal pathologist William Ian Beardmore Beveridge (1908-2006), said that facts and ideas are “dead in themselves. It is the imagination that gives them life.” We humans are blessed with the ability to imagine a world beyond the ordinary. Let’s make good use…
Creativity allows us to prioritize the present moment over our thinking. We’re the most human when we’re being creative. And when we give something–a project, a seminar, a relationship, a dilemma–space, the next right action naturally presents itself.
After I finished my Ph.D. at the University of Chicago, I tried very hard to do what I was ‘supposed’ to do—interview for an academic teaching position at some sort of prestigious university. But I couldn’t do it. Instead, I moved to the wilderness of northwest Montana. Here’s what happened instead: I developed self-reliance. In…
End of content
End of content