Humainologie creative dialogue Life and Death and Choosing a Theme for March

“Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass; it’s about learning to dance in the rain.” - anonymous

“What would life be worth if there were no death? Who would enjoy the sun if it never rained? Who would yearn for the day if there were no night?”

- Glenn Ringtved https://www.brainpickings.org/2016/03/08/cry-heart-but-never-break/

“Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live.” - Norman Cousins

I should emphasize again that in these emails what I present is based on my own way of thinking. Fortunately, each of us has different ways of thinking about things, and I certainly don’t want to pontificate about life and death!

One part of our team practice next Wednesday (March 3) will be choosing our theme for March. I will append herewith the menu of options we had developed in early January as possible themes for the months ahead. Positive Deviance seems a good choice for March, for several reasons, among them that it would be our first experience with having one of the week’s topics in one month be the same as the theme for the following month. This might be a good pattern to follow. Please use your imagination to come up with at least one fresh idea – in addition to those on the menu - for a theme that we could use either for March or for one of the months ahead.

Our topic for team practice on March 3 will be what David Thoreau was thinking about when he wrote

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”

So it’s about life and death, but we’ll develop the theme in our own way. I’ll use Dancing and Dying as our working title. Dance is the joy of movement, and movement is the essence of life. Dancing can be used as a metaphor for life.

By coming to terms with death, we also come to terms with life. Later this week when I send the Zoom link, I’ll include my synopsis of a very important book, The Needs of the Dying: A Guide for Bringing Hope, Comfort, and Love to Life’s Final Chapter by David Kessler. It’s a book that can help us come to terms with death (and therefore with life).

Here are some questions designed to tap into your creative genius:

1. If you were to borrow from Thoreau’s idea and pick one thing to focus on for one or two years, what would you choose? Would you go to the woods and live in a cabin? Or would you choose something very different, so that when you come to die, you can look back on that quest you embarked on as the time you really learned to live? The book by Chris Guillebeau, The Happiness of Pursuit, might help you come up with an irresistible idea, something that neither Thoreau nor Shakespeare nor Marcus Aurelius ever thought of.

2. Speaking of Marcus Aurelius, he kept a journal to help guide him along the path of the good life. What do you use? Please share your wisdom and experience on this. What is an excellent practice or guide or set of guidelines or reference you can recommend to us for how to get the most out of living each day? (This could be keeping a journal; or it could be a book you read recently, or something you learned from a mentor, or something that occurred to you “out of the blue” that helps to get you moving with enthusiasm every day.)

3. In the final chapter of your life, what do you think might give you the mindset you need for equanimity? Perhaps it has something to do with acceptance, as in

“Que sera, sera.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZbKHDPPrrc What do you think? And what might you do between now and then to build exactly that mindset that you need in those final days?

Dance is the joy of movement, and movement is the essence of life. Dancing can be used as a metaphor for life, and as a warmup for our creative dialogue. So…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTfxennz3xU

May I have this dance?

Arthur

This is the menu of possible themes that we had developed at our first team practice of 2021. If we keep going, we will surely make Calgary a moveable feast for our time. I think it's already happening.

· Service to others. This grew out of Helen’s enthusiasm for what Ahmer had shared with us of his life’s journey and what makes him happy. If we choose that theme for February, we might invite a staff member from one or more service organizations in Calgary, for example Inn from the Cold or the Calgary Women’s Shelter, to facilitate a dialogue in February and let us know how we can help them with their work.

· Positive deviance. What makes a person thrive? This contribution from Trina Listanco would shift our focus to those habits and ways of thinking that enable human flourishing. If we choose this as a theme, we might invite one or two people that month - Greta Thunberg, Margaret Atwood, and others come immediately to mind, but it would be fun to come up with ideas for whom we should invite - to lead us in a team practice session, sharing with us how they achieved their excellence.

· Completion. Each of us is incomplete in some way. I’ll take my unfortunate tendency to procrastinate (I’m trying to do better!) as an example. This suggestion from Christina McInnis might turn our attention to ourselves and how we can become more complete, and if we make this a theme for February (or one of the subsequent months) it might generate a process that includes taking stock, perhaps another look at Shawn Achor’s 7 principles in The Happiness Advantage, and even empathic listening all around.

· Love. What does that word really mean? How can we start with ourselves, then turn whatever it means toward others, and how can we become more aware of the impact it has on others and on ourselves? This contribution from Leila Keith should certainly be a theme for one of the months in 2021, perhaps for February. Shinobu Apple suggested a more detailed examination of how to create happiness in others, and we might choose that as another dot and then connect the two dots (Love and How to Create Happiness in Others) as our connect-the-dots game theme for February. You see how our group genius grows week by week!

· Our authentic self. Helen Ostrowski suggested this one as a theme, and we might approach this by asking the question: If you were the writer and director for a movie based on your life’s story, and you wanted to show in that movie who you really are and what effect on others your life has had, how would you write the screenplay and direct the film? Which actor(s) would you invite to play you? There would be other ways to approach the theme, but my guess is that this one could create a lot of interest in our team practice sessions in February if we chose it as a theme for that month.

· Forgiveness and reconciliation. Zoe’s suggestion for a theme included the point that forgiveness differs from reconciliation. Are there people in your own life with whom you would like to be reconciled before you die? How might that happen? And if it is already too late, because the other person has already died, how can you forgive yourself? How can you reconcile with yourself? Perhaps we could choose this theme for one of the months later in the year, when we have grown wiser with our 2021 team practice sessions and we feel we’re up to the challenge of this one.

· Human interactions with other species. It was Zenia’s cat that suggested this one. With Laurie Lin on our team, we are in an incredibly strong position to develop this theme one month in 2021, and we might even make a trip to the Calgary zoo sometime that month. It might be good to do it for one of the summer months when perhaps there will be more outdoor opportunities. Among the joyful memories we might share is our own interactions with other species. In my case, hoary marmots immediately come to mind. My late wife was in tears one day during her terminal illness and when I asked her why, she said it was because she would never see the hoary marmots again. She was recalling an experience we had had on a high plateau in the mountains. If we choose this theme suggested by Zenia’s cat, I’ll tell you more about that.

· Talking with strangers and overcoming racism. I’ll combine a theme suggested by Ahmer Memon with one I hope we can choose for one of the months of 2021. In particular, I would like to build my skills at reaching out across boundaries, to people whose views differ from my own, and initiating conversations with them. How is it possible not only to have a conversation with someone whose opinions differ from yours, but also to actually talk about those issues constructively? How might a dialectical progression be achieved (thesis and antithesis, leading to a synthesis)? I have some ideas, but I’ll save that for later. Contentious issues include such things as universal basic income (UBI). Segregation was a big issue in the North Carolina of my youth, and last night Carl Allen, who joined us from North Carolina, mentioned that he was reading Malcolm Gladwell’s book Talking to Strangers. Other issues include how a health care system should be financed. The theme of talking with strangers and overcoming racism could be a very important choice for one of the months in the year ahead. We might invite someone whose view on a specific issue differs from our dialogue team’s view on that issue, to facilitate one of our dialogues that month.