The Art of Knowing vs. The Know-It-All

For Day 7 of my 150 Best Self Edison Deck Challenge, I drew a "future" card that asks for 10 top of mind ideas/answers in 10 minutes. Today's prompt: Things you want to learn in the next 12 months.

1. Exploring the mind of poets. I recently watched the movie "Genius" that profiles the relationship between writer Thomas Wolfe and editor Maxwell Perkins. At their first meeting, in the Scribner offices, Wolfe tells Perkins (who discovered, Fitzgerald and Hemingway), "I wanted to meet you, the man who first read Mr. F. Scott Fitzgerald, and said yes, the world needs poets. Agah! Someone publish this bastard because the world needs poets.” Their tangled co-dependent relationship begins over a train ride where they bond over the lines of poets and prose (i.e. Shakespeare's The Tempest and Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities). It was the perfect partnership, Wolfe's meandering and prolific poetic prose shaped by Perkins' demand to focus on the big ideas: go for the lightning bolt and skip the thunder. I want to explore the lightning bolt.

2. The power of creativity unleashed and untethered. Just as I started this challenge I was gifted by the San Francisco Ballet Auxilliary a year's subscription to MasterClass.com as a personal thank you. It's a platform dedicated to learning from the masters that unabashedly use creativity, risk-taking, and discipline as a mantra. It's been my observation that those that try to tamper, control, and put creativity in a financially secure box are some of the most uninspiring, easily forgotten and insignificant players, just look at the annals of history for proof (Mozart vs. Salieri). I look forward to my year of learning from those that are masters, from those that turn a deaf ear to nay-sayers, and from those that despite the prediction of failure and doom, do it anyway.

3. The difference between those that quest and those that retreat. On the first day of not having a job, I donated to an organization that I am passionate about to support their mission to help people find their voices, achieve creative goals, and build new worlds—on and off the page. I received a thank you gift of "The Hero's Journal" whose goal is to differentiate between those that choose the quest rather than those that choose retreat. I look forward to preparing for my journey on a daily basis because in the words of the 'prince of paradox' G.K. Chesterton, "Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten."

4. Things that I do not know and mastering the art of curiosity. The biggest change in my lifetime has been observing that with knowledge just a keystroke or Siri question away, we have created a society suffering from a serious curiosity deficit. We've over valued data-driven outcomes, financial analysts and venture capitalists that have made many a feathered bed by being the "know-it-all" as they predict booms and busts and master the art of deflection when their sage advice doesn't pan out, and helped us lose sight of the joys garnered from not knowing. Taking the road less traveled requires curiosity, a vast amount of courage, and a tribe of adventure seekers that are united in the knowledge that the real risk is to not take a risk at all. (And no, Mark Zuckerberg was not the first to discover this truth.) I want to learn to be more curious as well as to be open to an unlearning journey.

5. How to mend, repair, and grow. This week I received the news that the bone that I spectacularly fractured on Easter Sunday is not mending, repairing or growing like expected. The prognosis isn't great if things don't turn around (even though there is some appeal in thinking bionics may be my superhero answer). I could choose to be devastated, or I could channel my energy learning about bone growth: learning how to mend, repair, and grow seems to be an analogy for the life lessons I've been asked to confront. For example, I was shocked to discover the role of cortisol (the stress hormone of our age) and how it acts as an inhibitor in bone density and repair. To those in my life that insist on serving up a cortisol breakfast, I'm saying, "No thank you." Adrenaline may make one feel the endorphins of flight, but making bones more porous is only an advantage to avians, not to mammals. This year I will learn to take a pass on the cortisol diet. Mend, repair, and grow.

6. How to be a better ally. After the murder of George Floyd, I like many (but still not enough) white people, looked at the social inequities of my country, my privilege and my work place. I began a journey that required honesty, selflessness, and reparation. It began by asking the question, "What could I do personally, professionally, and as a person in power?" and continues with humbly asking for help and taking action. Yet, I have much more to learn and much more to do. I was recently chastised for using the phrase "our art form" when referring to the systemic racism in ballet. This call out was done by a person in power, and white. How dare I use an inclusive word such as "our" when referring to that which we don't talk about. Being an ally means having hard conversations, and not sugar-coating the issues cleverly dressed up in tutus or nice-speak. Being an ally means being willing to learn, speak the truth, and walk the walk. And it will take all of us, as well as the courage to use the word "our" when we own the inequities. I believe that is what accountability looks like. I look forward to deepening my allyship with those that aren't threatened by the word "our."

7. How to recognize and minimize a major threat. I have a strong sense of resilience and I truly believe that there is always a path forward. That is my blind spot. Similar to what happens when you are in the eye of a storm, unless you are knowledgeable about the anatomy of a hurricane, you don't recognize the peril until it is too late. Or perhaps the better way to phrase what I'd like to learn this year is: 1) how animals avoid becoming dinner and 2) how plants stave off predators with adaptations such as thorns, toxins, camoflauge, and the ability to proliferate to a more fertile environment. I look forward to mastering how to survive, adapt, and re-sow.

8. The ubiquitous number 12. I was born on the twelfth day, and I've always been fascinated by the way the number 12 shows up. From numbers on a clock, to the twelve months of the year, to the twelve apostles or the twelve Greek gods, to the twelve houses of the zodiac. During the pandemic I wrote a page of affirmations (just happened to be twelve) and then worked through Caroline Myss's Archetypal Wheel (featuring 12 self-defining archetypes), and went on to create 12 paintings in my first-ever abstract painting class. Whether it is an atomic number (magnesium), a symbol, a pattern, or just a dozen eggs, I'm fascinated with all that 12 has to offer.

9. The art of Ayurveda. For all the promise of Western medicine, I keep stumbling over the breakthroughs attributed to the ancient practice and study of Ayurveda. Simply put, Ayurveda is the ancient science of life that sees body, mind, and spirit as interconnected elements inherently aligned to the rhythm of nature. The pandemic made that increasingly poignant, as some elements of nature flourished while other elements of our psyche crumbled and asked to be reassessed. I've always been a proud carrier of the ampersand. For me Ayurveda is part of the ampersand DNA that is deeply imbedded in who I am and who I hope to become.

10. Agility training. I couldn't end the list without a reference to my lovable puppy, Luka. Yes, being agile and adaptable is good for a pandemic, a necessity to age gracefully, and for transformation but in this context, I mean true dog training agility. Jumping through hoops, sliding through chutes, jumping for a well-thrown frisbee, or running a course with speed and deftness. For me that is the manifestation of joy, discipline, partnership and unconditional trust. We can all benefit from the sort of training that ends with exhaustion from a course well-played with its only reward being devotion and companionship. Who doesn't need a reason to bob and weave, master the see-saw of life, run circles around fixed objects, or simply jump for joy? For me, that is reason enough.

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