Integrate!

Over the weekend I had an intriguing weekend with a group of friends working on a problem which may or may not prove insurmountable but certainly looks very large. Everyone there was smart and skilled and everyone wanted the best for everyone else. We were in an wonderfully warm, safe, and very beautiful setting. Here's what I noticed. Most of the people in the room were used to solving problems that have solutions. They had excellent skills for applying to people who are trying to do things that they (the people in the room) believe to be solvable. Their various approaches and techniques work brilliantly almost all the time, because almost all the time they are working in situations where they congruently believe a solution to be possible. However, we were working with a different kind of problem - a paradigm shifter, a creative problem or maybe we were tilting at windmills. No one in the room was sure that problem could be solved. And here's what I noticed. Everyone b...

My mom and I are going to Paris in June. We have our flights booked and now we are exploring places to stay. I look at one of my computer screens at a tiny picture of a room or a spot marked on a map. And as I look the room I am in disappears and I am walking down and up big streets and small streets and garden paths. And it is that glorious time of year when light lasts longest and I can walk through mornings and afternoons and evenings. Sometimes I am people watching in a park. I could be in a cafe but more often I am wide eyed in front of some achingly beautiful display in a patisserie or a fruit shop. Or in small streets so crowded with people that it is hard to get a good look at the shops. I wait patiently for the clearest view of a painting or wonder at the play of curve and flat and light in one of the Rodin statues in a garden. This is Paris. So even the tiny pictures of rooms in small hotels are memories of things that have and haven't been on streets I have or have...