I’m undertaking a 1000-day reinvention project, blogging here daily to track my progress. In Tuesday Book Club, I share an idea from a book.
(Intimations of the future! to celebrate the future, not the past! To compose the myth of the future! To live in hope!) And then to draw the curtain again and to turn our thoughts to concrete immediate goals!
Friedrich Nietzsche, Unpublished Fragments from the Period of Thus Spoke Zarathustra (summer 1882–Winter 1883/84), quoted in Han’s The Spirit of Hope
“Hope,” writes Han, “opens up for us a field of possibilities. Only then can we set our eyes on a concrete goal.”
And, “Without hope, we remain trapped in beenness [what has already happened] or in the badly existing [the hopeless present]. Only hope generates meaningful actions that brings the new into the world.”
after winter comes spring
Though I feel the cold of winter, in my psyche if not outside — it’s going to reach 70° F here today) — I know spring will arrive. Yesterday, I sowed purple coneflower and shasta daisy seeds in my garden. I watered the lawn. I swapped my winter welcome mat for one with blooms of many colors.
I started a new art inventory spreadsheet too, in preparation for moving forward with marketing and selling my art. The first step is being clear about the art pieces I have ready, and want to make available for sale. I need to assign them all titles, record their dimensions, and calculate prices. I need to figure out how much they might cost to ship.
In winter, I felt inert and lifeless and without goals. As winter turns to spring, I feel hopefulness. I turn my thoughs to Nietzsche’s “concrete, immediate goals.” I imagine how I might “compose the myth of the future.”