I’m enjoying a bit of reading this morning. From my balcony on a sunny and warm summer day. Before I dive into a bunch of email and project tasks. In many ways it feels like I don’t have time, or shouldn’t make time for this reading. Yet, I can’t help but be drawn to the wellness of exploring some ideas. These always tend to ground my project work. And help me to feel a wellness that I know many of us seek in these busy and changing times.
I’m enjoying two books. One is “Perseverance,” by Meg Wheatley. It is a short book. One to carry with you. Read a page or two here and there. Open it randomly to a page and welcome a thought for the day. Meg is a master conversation starter in person and in her writings. This book is a great resource for those purposes, and the outcomes of wellness that show us when a community practices inquiry and listening together.
Today’s pages were on Choice, Being Stuck, and Control. I love the way Meg has woven her thinking into quotes and poems. This one today by the Sufi mystic and poet, Rumi, “Sit down and be quiet. You are drunk. And this is the edge of the roof.” Meg offered it with her short piece on Stuck. It is an invitation to notice our patterns when we are stuck, when we feel stuck.
The second book is one I’ve been reading for a while. Each time I pick it up I feel a particular energy with it. Clay Shirky’s, “Here Comes Everybody.” I reference this book a lot. Shirky helps me to feel the energy of working with self-organization and emergence through the stories he tells and the principles he shares.
Today, some inspirations from a chapter, “everyone is a media outlet.” Shirky describes the “mass amateurization” of media. Many avenues to name news and amplify it through connected networks and “radical spread of expressive capabilities.”
Both these books help me to feel more of the pulse of work that I am in. Clarity. Insight. And a lot of joy on a summer morning on a balcony.
