“Dad, what time is it?”
“Henry, you’re sitting right in front of a clock.”
“I know. The power went out. I’m setting the clock to the right time.”

It was a good reminder: understand the situation before you judge or comment.

Context first.

Not that your wishes may come true — but rather that what comes true is consonant with the life you hope to live.

Because wishes are guesses, and sometimes we guess poorly.

Because we don’t always see the bigger picture. We don’t always understand what the ripples touch. We guess locally and experience globally.

Poor guesses aside, may your life be richer and fuller than the wishes you imagine.

Occasionally, we ask the opinion of others just to confirm what we already know. We seek confirmation, and we’re prepared to reject alternate views.

Do you like this shirt? Does this painting composition work? Should I say yes to this opportunity?

Sometimes we just need to hear someone agreeing with us. Or to experience the internal resistance when someone disagrees.

These brief interactions are like a performance — the last bit of settling before we fully commit to what we already believe. They’re a trial run to see how the external world responds to our internal positions.

A little testing helps us to know.

Perhaps you’re preparing for a future event. Practicing, rehearsing, getting ready. This extended dress rehearsal is you doing the work of making sure you show up at peak performance.

All the while — amidst these preparations — today is not a dress rehearsal. Today is today; your one opportunity.

So live it. It’s the real thing. And in less than twenty-four hours, it will be gone forever.

Events surely dot the horizon, but the grand event that is today welcomes you. Even more: it invites your unique participation.

Two slightly different angles:

“I stuck to the practice and it didn’t work.”
versus
“I gave up on the practice because it wasn’t working.”

The positions are not quite the same.

How often do we blame lack of results when really, we’re tired of making the necessary effort?

Live out your dreams.

But make sure they’re your dreams.

Because sometimes we find ourselves trying to live out someone else’s dreams.

Make sure you’re living yours.

And encourage others to live out their dreams. That is, their own dreams — not yours, or even your own dreams for them.

Our dreams are our own to live out.

The question is, “Are you available?”

But what this really means is:

Can you commit to a specific date?
Can you prioritize this over other important things?
Do you have adequate time and energy to prepare?
Can you bring your best self?

Because saying yes is saying yes to the prep work.

That is, saying yes to one thing is saying yes to many things.

It’s remarkable what a change in posture and some intentional deep breaths can do. And these tools are available to us all the time at zero cost.

The world is saturated with pharmacological options and advice for lifestyle changes. And indeed, these can be necessary.

But let’s remember some of the simple things too.

Breathe well and be well.

“Yet” is a powerful word. It signals change. It embraces possibility.

“I didn’t achieve my goal … yet.”

“I don’t know how … yet.”

But there’s another tag that can be just as powerful: “... and I’m OK with that.”

This other phrase is not about giving up or aiming low. Rather, it’s about being at peace with what is.

While we strive to be our best, we don’t exist to be full-time optimizers, problem-solvers, and growth-mindset adherents.

Sometimes our humble task is to just be OK with the present moment.

Six months ago, I used the “scheduled send” feature of my email client. Just for fun, I drafted a note of encouragement to myself and set it to deliver in the future.

Today, it arrived.

I had forgotten all about writing the note, and it was a nice surprise to see it land. (I appreciated the kind words.)

The experiment created a beautiful time bridge between that moment and today. A gift to my future self.

I wonder: how might you encourage your own future self? What would you say? What will you say?

We’re having a large whiteboard installed in a conference room at my office.

Ahead of the installation, I put wide painter’s tape on the wall, and using a marker, I noted exactly where the bottom edge of the board should be, along with the right and left edges.

I leaned a six-foot-long spirit level against that section of wall, too.

The hope is that the installers will see precisely where the whiteboard should be mounted. And in seeing the level, they’ll be reminded that we care about the details.

All this took about fifteen minutes of my time. It’s an investment in the quality of installation. It’s a way to set up others for doing quality work. It’s me trying to game the system in my favor.

Sometimes, in order to increase the odds that we get what we want, we need to do a little prep work. It would be far easier to give the instructions, “Just get it done,” but it’s a better bet to set the stage for a desired outcome.

* * *

Epilogue: I wasn’t on site when the installers did their work. To my delight, they did the job to spec. Amusingly, I’m told that they saw the leveling tool and sighed, “I guess he wants it to be level.”

Indeed.

There are a lot of bad drawings in the world. A lot.

Unskilled, uninformed, uninspiring, unsophisticated, primitive, and naïve.

A lot of bad drawings.

But good drawings exist too; they exist because someone chose to work through the bad drawings. No one starts with inherent skill. It’s learned. And it’s learned by diving in. That is, by first making bad drawings. Lots of them.

And then, over time, the work gets better.

So many creative pursuits are this way. They involve a period — sometimes a long, awkward period — where the work is less-than. Where the maker struggles. Where the chasm between where we are and where we want to be is vast.

But those who stay the course make progress. Those who remain students become masters. Little by little, a portfolio of learning becomes a collection worth sharing.

It often begins by making bad drawings.

Spend more time with people who remind you of who you are … and less time with people who remind you of who you’re not.

And regardless of whether you seek reminders of who you used to be, be sure to surround yourself with people who support you in who you hope to be.

We spend a lot of time and resources seeking comfort and tranquility.

But we know, too, that unrest — even disturbance — has a purpose.

We can learn from oysters and washing machines: a little agitation can be a good thing.

It’s what we do when we’re unsettled that makes all the difference.

What’s a mother like? Or a father? Or a teacher, an artist, a friend, a neighbor, a colleague?

We can point to examples. But for certain people, we ourselves are the example.

So let us be for others what we wish these roles to be.

We’ll keep your attention over here so you don’t notice what’s going on over there.

That’s one way magic tricks work.

It’s also how pickpockets work.

And in a way, it’s how many parts of our culture can work.

Not that there’s necessarily a magician or thief orchestrating how we consume the culture. But distraction and diversions do exist. And there is a cost.

Ask the literary classics. Ask the art studio. Ask the local hiking trail.

We cannot attend to everything. So attention in one area comes at the expense of attention in another.

It’s OK to be selective with our attention. Indeed, we ought to be.

Even when we know better, part of us hopes that insights and solutions will be regularly delivered to us, neatly packaged — if only we calmly wait.

But more often, that’s not how it goes.

More often, breakthroughs are born of diligence, experimentation, and effort.

When faced with a problem, we can choose to wait on it or we can choose to work on it.

The better path forward involves not patiently waiting, but patiently working.

Posselt’s Textile Journal from 1909 (you don’t have to pull out your own copy) defines fine-draw this way: “To sew or close up faults in a fabric by inserting missing threads etc., by hand with a needle.”

Merriam-Webster is more poetic: “to mend torn edges by drawing together with invisible stitches.”

Either way, the term is a rich metaphor.

How can we make beautiful repairs? How do we bring together ragged edges in such a careful way that the two become one? What care and precision is at play? What does it say about us that we’re willing to take the time and workmanship necessary for such stitching together?

And how does this relate to our personal relationships? Or the way our cultures intersect?

How can we ourselves become fine-drawers?

Creatives know: some problems can only be solved with paint. Or clay, or poetry, or melody, or play …

Others will seek solutions through conventional means like money, power, and influence.

But some of the best and rewarding problems to solve are those solved using the tools of creativity.

The culture hasn’t gotten shallow. It’s just the part of the culture that’s shouting, vying for attention, and nearly everywhere — that’s the part that can be rather shallow.

Wisdom still exists. Profound questions still exist. Ancient meditations still exist.

But for the most part, we have to seek these things.

It’s hard to shout insight. And headlines are too short to capture what we can learn from thinking deeply.

So don’t lose heart. The good stuff is still all around us. It’s just quieter than the rest.