What are you willing to let go of?
The optimism of fall. Plus workshops coming up!
Reminder: Optimistic Coaching’s first live, online workshop is taking place tomorrow! “Practicing Resilience” is a grounded conversation about how to rest, adapt, and grow so that what is challenging today doesn’t take you under and won’t stay challenging forever. Join us — Thursday, October 2 at 2 pm ET/ 10 am PT.
“The wilderness constantly reminds me that wholeness is not about perfection.” — Parker Palmer
This week has been about prepping for tomorrow’s workshop, as well as a 3-hour nature-based workshop on October 7 called “Walk Your Problems.”
And today is October 1—the beginning of the best month in my book!
“I’m so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers.”
– L.M. Montgomery, in Anne of Green Gables
There is a church sign I drive past multiple times every day. This isn’t going to be a post about church or religion or church signs. Except for this one, which currently reads: “Fall is a reminder that God makes things new.”
And I hate to quibble (do I?), but, at least for me, that is not a reminder Fall brings.
I would rewrite the sign to say:
“Fall is a reminder that letting go is part of the universal pattern of life, death, and rebirth.”
Spring is a reminder of the renewal of things, of rebirth and new creation.
But this insistence to skip to the “good stuff,” to go to the “making things new” part. It’s wishful thinking, revealing Western culture’s discomfort (and disgust?) with loss, uncertainty, sorrow, and death.
In 2022, I got my first tattoo.
It’s a visual I came up with that reminds me of the pattern.
A year later, I wrote this reflection about what it means in part.
It represents The Universal Pattern.
Life, death, rebirth.
Order, disorder, reorder.
Construction, deconstruction, reconstruction.
Life, death, resurrection.
This pattern is in our seasons, it’s represented in the lifecycle of plants, it’s reflected in the story of Easter, and it’s woven throughout our lives and the entire universe if we have eyes to see it.
This geometric mark represents the pattern.
It is a sunrise/sunset/sunrise.
It is a solar eclipse beginning or ending.
It is roots going deep.
It is a flower blooming.
It is a stone rolling away from an empty tomb.
May we learn to recognize the pattern, to embrace its wisdom, to bear the fruit of its revolution, to speak of its gifts.
May we find, in all things, life coming out of death, rebirth coming from loss, hope rising in the midst of suffering.
Where might you need to embrace disorder? Where might you want to let go of something? What in your life is deserving of some pruning, going fallow, or being made into compost?
This isn’t a pessimistic view of life or the world. I find it incredibly optimistic to trust and believe in this cycle of order, disorder, and reorder. Not easy, but true. To trust and know that the goal isn’t perfection, at least not in the mathematical way we are tempted to think about it.
I’ll let Parker Palmer close us out with his understanding of what perfection could mean if we are willing to embrace the imperfections, to let go of what is ready to be let go of, to embrace a season of disorder to make room for what may come in the seasons to follow.
Wholeness does not mean perfection: it means embracing brokenness as an integral part of life. Knowing this gives me hope that human wholeness—mine, yours, ours—need not be a utopian dream, if we can use devastation as a seedbed for new life.
— Parker Palmer
Links to Check Out
Wired and tired? How our sense of “interoception” gets scrambled by modern life. / Manoush Zomorodi
I’ve followed Manoush for a long time and I’m really excited she’s back in her sweetspot here.
Give Me 12 Minutes and I’ll Give You 30 Years of Productivity Advice / Daniel Pink (video)
This is a great distillation of key principles that are genuinely helpful
Your Brain on Moral Tinder: The science of why we swipe away nuance in every argument
“It’s not that we’re wrong about our concerns. It’s more that any conclusion that can be reduced to such a simple binary is probably missing some important information. It’s like trying to understand a novel by only reading the first and last sentences and assuming that the middle is just fluff.”
“Wheels of a Dream” - The Broadway Production of “Ragtime” / The Late Show with Stephen Colbert (video)
I’ve watched this no less than six times. Joshua Henry is incredible, and now I have to get to NYC to see this Broadway revival of a show I first saw in Chicago 25 years ago. (The themes and message of the show are timely and [insert chef’s kiss].
And don’t forget…
You can schedule a free 90-minute Discovery Session and get coaching on whatever matters most to you right now.
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This dispatch was written to music, including the song “Cardinal” by Kacey Musgraves, from the 2024 album, Deeper Well.