I read a lot of books. These days, mostly on Kindle even though I prefer paper. My appetite for books is pretty limitless, but the space I have to hold them is not…
However, there are always books that make the transition from digital to physical. There is something about them - a potential relationship with ideas that needs closer contact, perhaps - and so they arrive to join their peers on my many, random bookshelves. I do not organise them - I let them mix and find their own company, like driftwood.
Sometimes, just wandering along the shoreline of those bookshelves triggers an insight.
And so, James Clear’s “Atomic Habits” found itself washed up next to Frans Osinga’s “Science, Strategy and War” in the company of sketches I had made on Dave Snowden’s “Estuarine Mapping”.
The insight that found its way into my mind was simple, and compelling. The random assembly of stardust that is each of us has a finite time here, and has a variable amount of energy to expend. Whether we spend it trying to move something big a little, smaller things enough to make a difference, or spend it consuming and reacting to circumstance is a choice determined by how we think, the company we keep, and what matters to us. Some, of course, born into advantage, spend it trying to stop things from changing at all.
James Clear reminds us of the power of small movement, Dave Snowden that we are always in a tidal flow of circumstance, and Frans Osinga, referencing Boyd, of the dance between “Cheng” - the conventional energy of governments and organisational hierarchy, and “Ch’i” the surprise, unconventional energy of insurgency and entrepreneurs.
Tides have enormous energy. We can choose to just go with the flow and be carried along or harness it to do something small and unexpected that makes a difference to those around us. I get inspired by those I know who weave and connect through conversation, like
, or those who aspire to change the health of their village, like Steven Shepherd or Sue Heatherington, making a difference one poem at a time.If we all do more of that and follow their lead, the big stuff will dance with us.
Footnote
This, from the wonderful Maria Popova…just because it’s worth it.
When I was a kid, there was a new park near our home. Through it was a stream that the developers excavated to follow a straight line. It did not take long for the stream to recapture its meandering route, building up sand in places whether the stream would naturally curve through its artificial stream bed. We think of flow as a way to describe our direction. I believe is a way to understand the consciousness of the natural world. We either ride it where it takes us or we fight to keep it going in a direction we want it to go. As a result we lose our freedom to discover.