Humainologie creative dialogue questions for you from Naomi and Mahendra for tonight

“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”

“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.

(Alice and the Cheshire Cat, from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll)

The Cheshire Cat has a good point, and we can discuss it at any of our creative dialogues in the year ahead.

For tonight’s team practice, with Naomi and Mahendra coaching us, I will here provide some questions suggested by Naomi to get your ideas flowing. The Zoom link provided by Shinobu is also included here again. And you also know that Tarek Nemr will be a guest tonight, to tell us a bit about his life’s journey and where he has found happiness.

Questions to consider for our creative dialogue tonight:

· How do you see happiness? (Based on your own personal experience, how would you define happiness?)

· How do you see education? (For example, what do you see as the purpose of education as you experienced it in school? Was it successful in achieving that purpose in your case? In your opinion, what should be the purpose of education?)

· What was the role of happiness in your years of education?

· Have your experiences with education equipped you to lead a happy life?

· Can happiness and education work together?

Here once again is the Zoom link for tonight.

Topic: Humainologie creative dialogue team practice Time: Jan 6, 2021 06:30 PM Mountain Time (US and Canada) Every week on Wed, until Feb 24, 2021, 8 occurrence(s) Jan 13, 2021 06:30 PM Jan 20, 2021 06:30 PM Jan 27, 2021 06:30 PM Feb 3, 2021 06:30 PM Feb 10, 2021 06:30 PM Feb 17, 2021 06:30 PM Feb 24, 2021 06:30 PM Join Zoom Meeting https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81306921476?pwd=QnJ3bkFvSXVQSWVacXJ4Wml4cTEwUT09

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The theme for January 2021 is happiness. At our team practice on January 27, we will choose a theme for February. Appended below this message is a menu of possible themes, as developed by participants at our creative dialogue last week.

Toot sweet tonight,

Arthur

Follow up synopsis of the Humainologie creative dialogue of Wednesday January 6, 2021

“If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.” - Ernest Hemingway

Our first creative dialogue team practice of the year set a record for attendance. I counted twenty all together. Ahmer Memon’s wisdom gave us a head start for the evening. Contributions to the dialogue from everyone gave us a fine menu from which we can choose themes for the months ahead. I will summarize here what I heard as your suggestions - let me know if I missed one - and we can choose from these a theme for February, perhaps at our January 27 team practice. 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.