IS: Reclaiming ambition
Upcoming events:
- Sunday Nov 9: Community Hub call 20.6
- Tuesday Nov 11: 2ndRen: The Oasis
- Friday Nov 14: IS Connection Call
- Saturday Nov 15: Being With It All (session 1 of 3)
- Tuesday Nov 25: Second Renaissance Fair
Last week's newsletter was "Entering a new era" and the Community Hub session title was "Personal laminar flow".
Newly announced: Being With It All three-session series, every second Saturday starting November 15th.
Statements I have made this week:
- I am being dragged into more ambition by the wave of potential across the web
- Forget "safe to fail" experiments, I want "hurts to fail" experiments
- The more beautiful world hyperstitions from a spiral of: believe it, live it, build it
- A movement needs vitality of: vision, leaders, participants, resources, activities
Why would I want "hurts to fail" instead of "safe to fail"? (My reference derived from "safe to fail experiments" which is credited to Snowden/Cynefin, though actually "safe enough to fail" from Sociocracy would more precisely frame my pushback.) Because it means we're trying things that really matter. Things that we care about, and will grieve the failure of. Turning toward and looking into that sense of risking failing-to-achieve-dreams, I see... well, if failure would feel bad, wouldn't avoiding the attempt ensure the worst outcome and feel worse in the long run? Yes of course.
Reclaiming ambition from the earlier achiever-ego, in service to post-tragic sincerity, means aiming for outcomes in a way that aren't just learning. Learning is good, yes keep learning continually, but there comes a time to cash out that learning in the form of success. When? Not when the direction is "good enough for now", but when it is so good that you can't not try, even if failing will be costly and painful.
The courage that this requires is not the blinders of "this has to go right, failure is not an option" — in fact it's the post-tragic embrace of and intimacy with failure that makes success possible. Whatever is un-faceable in one frame can be accepted in the next zoom-out frame. Yup, I might fail, and there are other people. Yep, our community might fail, and there are other communities. Yes, this movement might fail, and others will rise just as previous movements have risen and fallen. The future of humanity might fail, and yet the journey of life will continue. Life in this solar system and light cone may even be extinguished, and something bigger than this universe must have started it and will likely outlive it. The more you zoom out, the more that "courage" transmutes into simple obedience to what wants to come through you.
Safety through retreat is not an option — safety is an illusion. If failure hurts, let it hurt in service of love and life. As long as we draw breath, we haven't failed yet. As long as we connect to the unitive, the breath of life is not merely what moves through our lungs.
Am I talking to myself, revving myself up, rechecking my integrity? You betcha. Am I also talking to you? Well, you tell me. If you feel the tug of the more beautiful world, that's the thing — the vision we can believe in, calling us from the future of its fulfillment. Let's walk each other forward.
James