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ON WRITING

How should a human being lead their life?

Aristotle poses this question in his writings in Ethics, and it’s one we all ask ourselves at some point in our lives:

“How should I lead my life?”
“Why am I here?”
“What is meaningful? Worthwhile?”
“What’s the goal, outside of survival?”

I doubt there will ever be absolute definitive answers to these kinds of questions, but I want to share a storytelling perspective that I just find useful to life-hack some meaning into my days:

For some context, when writers and speakers craft their stories, they have certain intentions. They might want to move the audience. To elicit an emotional reaction. Or tell a story that is considered meaningful, memorable. Or they have an idea to unpack, a vision to share, an inspiring something that could spark change in the audience.

They essentially craft stories to describe their own beliefs and values, in such a way that strangers will be moved towards those values in some way. They have this crafting toolkit that allows them to build meaning and influence into their scenes. They have the ability to generate an interesting and engaging story, that forces an audience to sit up and listen.

It's a bit manipulative really, but a good storyteller will deliver their content in such a way that others’ attentions are captured, their interest held, their hearts awakened, their imagination alive, their minds intrigued and challenged. And when the story is over, the values of the audience may be slightly more aligned to those of the teller.

That’s a really powerful skillset. And no, I don't think the ability to influence others makes life meaningful.

What interests me is WHY storytelling elicits this engagement at all. Do we, the audience, respond to good stories because they are told well, or are good stories told in response to our natural predilection to respond to those deeper elements contained within?

The storytellers of old may have developed their craft out of necessity to be paid, but the chemistry works for a reason, and I think it’s this: We all respond to STORY because we are built to engage in the deep elements within the story.

Conflict. Meaning. Love. Loss. Transformation. Everything we respond to in a story is a reflection of what resonates in our real lives. The story is simply the archetype of a truth that we all deeply and intuitively understand.

For example, let's say we have a protagonist in a story who gets removed from office through a nepotistic process. The storyteller is describing an injustice, a bullying, and we the audience immediately feel it. Not because we have been specifically overlooked in favour of the boss’s daughter for a "logistics role" at work, but because in our deep human core of universal understanding, we have felt the same. The surface experience is different, but the underlying philosophical base is the same. On the surface, there are a billion different stories, but below, we are the same.

When searching for meaning, this concept really makes my heart leap, and it's at the core of my story coaching work: how to get past the surface differences, and realise that we are the same. We’re all in this together. We are human.

We need to get over, get past, get beyond our assumption that whatever is happening on the surface is all that is happening. The surface is not the truth. The surface is just “life”. It’s the stuff that’s happening. But below it is where the storyteller works: In the realm of what we make those surface experiences mean. This is the space I want to consider a whole lot more often: what did I make that mean?

So this is where I find meaning for myself. This is why I’m still learning and researching how storytellers craft their stories. Because within that crafting is a deep insight into the human condition, and a whole toolkit for creating meaningful life experiences.

These days, my question is this:

“By implementing the ancient tools of story in my actual day-to-day living, can I generate new life experiences that I and others would find interesting and engaging? Could I create life scenes that capture attention, hold interest, awaken hearts, revive imaginations, intrigue and challenge minds?”

And my answer is yes. I absolutely can. It will be a life’s work, and it will be infused with hope and love and conflict and mindfulness. But also, a little more meaning.

Nook

I recently attended a writer's club in the city. An eclectic group of authors, screenwriters and creatives spend ten or twenty minutes at a time writing things based on a prompt. The focus this week was on past memories, childhood moments, that sort of thing. The idea is that the prompt triggers certain words, that draw out certain memories, that remind us of forgotten experiences, that we can use to discover more about ourselves. It's a kind of narrative therapy, as well as a creative writing exercise.

For me, this exercise was a reminder of how I synthesise my thoughts and ideas. It's embarrassing to admit, but I honestly feel like my head is perpetually empty. A clean slate, or a holding space. Until I speak a word, or write a sentence, my mind is entirely blank. When I form the words, my brain then catches up - it's quite backwards to how I imagine most humans think.

I've gotten used to it over time, but it's still scary: To do or be anything in life, I have to somehow trust that my emptiness is fullness, and then I have to speak myself into being.

Anyway, below is a piece I wrote in the writer's club. You might see a progression from "empty headspace" to "childhood memory" to "what really matters to me."

(The prompt was "cosy nook" incidentally, and we had twenty minutes.)

----

I like freedom. I do. Wide open spaces, and open skies, and all of that. But they are not my favourite places. What I love more than anything are smaller spaces. Snuggle spaces. Cosy nooks. When I’m in the wide open, my mind reaches for the ceiling, it stretches to the edges of sight. I take in as much as I can reach, and it’s hard to process it all. Writing in a field is not easy for me.

No, what I love are loft spaces. One desk and a rainy window. A rug, a heater, a chair and some whisky. Constriction of the physical space, so that my mind can relax, strip down to it’s togs, and dive into the deep well of internal space.

When I was a kid, we moved houses a lot. I didn’t think it was anything unusual, but eventually I learned that no, most families had more than one Christmas in the same house. Most kids had treasures, and stuff from years ago, whereas we always arrived at a new house a box or two lighter. It was the moving company that lost the box, Dad would say.

But here’s the thing. As far as childhood memories go, my most fondest ones involve those cardboard boxes. When we were getting close to moving day, we would have rooms piles high with boxes, pushed up against the walls and the windows, three or four high. I would get lost in the beige cities of the spare bedroom, spend hours snuggled in a corner, the towering boxes on my left, and the window to the garden on my right.

I don’t ever remember the garden though. I never saw outside the glass. My world was two feet wide and as deep as my 10-year-old body, and it was wonderful. I had books to read, a cat to pat, and nothingness to stare at. It was the late afternoon light that really got me. Everything just glowed, and I would focus my attention on a space three inches in from the window, on the fine cloud of haze, dust and cat hair that spun in lazy golden circles. It was eternal time in that space.

No, writing in a field is not easy for me. I would need to build a barn.

Transformation

In storytelling, there is always a great emphasis on making an audience feel something, or think something, or change somehow. We ask "how will this story transform my audience?"

But why is audience transformation important? Why bother considering who we are speaking to, or writing to, at all?

For many, especially in academia, considering one’s audience is not their highest priority. Their concern is for the integrity of the content, the completeness of the information. And that’s okay. They are doing exactly what they should be doing - accurately documenting a concept for historical record, for education.

The subtle (but actually enormous) difference between information-sharing and storytelling, is in the intent:

Storytelling intends to move others.

Storytelling is social change-making, idea-sharing in a way that is memorable and transformational. So, how the audience responds to your ideas does matter. A well-crafted story allows your reader or listener to easily take your ideas with them. Like a passenger on a road trip, your idea is driven to fresh places, introduced to new friends, shared and enjoyed.

It's transformation, not documentation.

Storytelling is a relationship. It seeks permission, it respects all parties, it builds trust. It opens possibilities for your audience, but doesn’t coerce change out of them.

Whether we are on a stage, writing a book or in a conversation, wherever our ideas are being shared it is vital that they are delivered with care and consideration of the audience in front of us. If we cannot make our audience care somehow, our stories will go nowhere.

When an audience is open to our message, then our ideas, our contribution to the world, have the best chance of making the personal, societal or relational impact they were conceived to make.

Three layers of questions I ask everyone

I'll let you in on a secret. This business I'm running, where I help you write your best books and tell your best stories, is really just a trojan horse. It's a useful by-product of my real journey to find all the ways to craft a meaningful life.

Every hour I spend researching storycraft, and narrative theory, and story philosophy, I am learning how writers engage their audience, how they create meaningful moments, lasting change, character transformation. And it's incredibly powerful to master all these techniques, so that our stories can be powerful and memorable. But beyond the creating of stories and content and ideas, I'm finding myriad crossovers with the living of meaningful stories.

Everything we respond to in storytelling also holds a truth somehow in real life, and this fascinates me. I think it is important, and you'll find a lot of my writing is trojan-horsing these ideas into the conversations. Just wanted to give you the kind of heads-up that the city of Troy would have no doubt appreciated.

One such story/life crossover is in the questions writers ask of their characters.

When writing engaging characters, we ask questions in layers. From the external layers at the surface, through the feelings and emotions of the internal layers, all the way down to the philosophical beliefs and worldviews that a character has. Finding the answers to these questions helps us to understand and identify with our characters, and also develop deeper more meaningful interactions with them.

Thinking in this way was extraordinarily useful during all the interviews Rach and I conducted for the book we published a few years ago, and it has become something I apply in my daily conversations now, to craft more meaningful interactions.

Here are a few examples of how this External-Internal-Philosphical framing reveals more of a character, enough that we might actually start to care about them a bit:

CONFLICT:

What is the external problem?
"I lost my job, I've lost my cashflow..."

What internal discomfort is being caused as a result?
"I’m frustrated, afraid, anxious..."

What is the philosophical base of all this?
"I care about what others think of me... Status is important to me."
"I don't know if I am enough? Do I have what it takes to choose a new path?"
"Being fired for good morals was wrong, and unjust!"

AMBITION:

What is the external desire of the character?
"I want to exercise and get fit."

What is their internal desire, the subtext, the “why”?
"I want a particular person to find me attractive."

What is the philosophical base? Why is that “why” so important to me, or to the world?
"I believe appearances contribute to attraction."
"I don't think I have anything else of value inside me, so how I look matters."

CHANGE:

After everything, what has changed externally?
"I’ve lost weight, I’m fit now."

What has changed internally?
"I’m confident, I can trust myself with my choices, I actually like myself now."

What has changed philosophically?

"I believe I am loveable and valuable. Appearance doesn’t matter as much as I thought, but self-worth, that’s the big thing!"

—

Obviously these answers can go in so many directions, but hopefully you can see the potential in asking the questions. We uncover more about a character, and eventually we will land on something that resonates with us. I may not care at all about your job, but I totally understand the tension around "do I have what it takes?" I don't really care about what actually happened at recess, but I do care about how it made my child feel, and what he believes about that interaction.

Whatever is going on in another's life, asking questions from all three layers can help us find the common ground, and make their stories matter.

Where boredom can't touch us

To be alive is to be in perpetual conflict. We are always lacking something, we always desire things.

When we LACK the lacking, when we are comfortable and have no desire, when there is no conflict, we become bored.

So, if we were in a story, our writer would add some complication to the story, on one of three levels of conflict:

  • Internal (thoughts and emotions)

  • Relational (relationships with others)

  • External (external places and activity)

    *read more about multi-level conflict in Robert McKee's epic book "Story: substance, structure, style, and the principles of screenwriting (1997)

And that's a brilliant thing to do, because conflict infuses meaning into stories. The writer must introduce some conflict into our story, or nothing meaningful can happen.

But where should the conflict go? Internal? Relational? External? (spoiler: I'm encouraging all three, simultaneously...)

If the writer chooses to only work on one of these conflict levels, she would need to employ a big cast of extra characters, or have a huge amount of locations, just to keep the boredom at bay. To keep it interesting for our audience.

  • Our Internal conflict would need so many people to populate memories and imagination.

  • Our Relational conflicts would require a soap opera full of different relationships, in different places.

  • Our External conflicts would look like a big action movie, full of travel and movement, but with nothing happening internally.

It’s story, and there is conflict, but it’s still a huge struggle against boredom.

Let's be honest, we do this in our lives, don't we? To avoid the boredom. We dive into multiple relationships, surround ourselves with friends, facebook, community. We try desperately to keep the excitement strong with spicy romantic upsets and best-friend fallouts. This is the soap opera of our lives, and we are scrambling to keep our lives interesting.

Or, we make up our own huge stories in our head - all the others who love us/hate us/have hurt us/deserve to be with us. All the locations we’ve been in or want to be in. Real or imagined, we just keep it all going, to avoid the boredom.

Or we live out the action movie and just get out there and DO. Go all the places, do all the physical things, stay busy, all the while avoiding any internal conflict negotiation. We become high-functioning robots. We look good on the outside, but to keep anyone’s attention we have to move even faster, do even more, keep performing. Our greatest fear is that if we stop, then we’ll be bored with ourselves. And others will be bored with us.

*Please know that I write this as someone who has often directed such a boring life scene for myself that I want to walk out of my own movie. It's common, and it's okay. But I'm learning to create better scenes in my life, hence these articles.

To truly write a meaningful story, that engages our audience and destroys boredom completely, we have to design our conflict better. We need to make things simpler, and more complex, at the same time. And that involves working with all three of the levels of conflict simultaneously:

  • Internal conflict - We courageously negotiate feelings of self-worth, love, compassion, mindfulness.

  • Relational conflict - We build relationships with a few great people, and don’t shy away from conversations and moments that are uncomfortable, and allow a deepening of the bonds of friendship and love.

  • External conflict - We exercise our internal beliefs and personal relationships in an external physical way - to do work that matters, actions with purpose and meaning.

If we aim to reduce all those extra characters, reduce all those locations, and simply concentrate on the richness of multi-level conflict , then our lives will fall into something deep and meaningful, where boredom can’t touch us.

You are an explorer

“You are an explorer, and you represent our species, and the greatest good you can do is to bring back a new idea, because our world is endangered by the absence of good ideas. Our world is in crisis because of the absence of consciousness.”

- Terence McKenna, ethnobotanist (1946-2000)

The aspirational identity of your book

One of the games we play in the Story Coaching framework is that of aspirational identities.

It's not a new concept, asking ourselves who we aspire to become in life, or considering who our customers want to be and how we can sell them something that helps them get there. It's advertising 101.

For now I'll leave the aspiration of self to the gurus like Tony Robbins, and the aspirations of customers to Don Draper and his Mad Men advertising team. What I'm interested in is the aspirational identity of your book. Who does your book want to be when it grows up? Or if you are a speaker, what does your keynote or your talk aspire to become? We are spending time with the entity that will deliver your idea.

Exercises like this are important for two reasons. First, it helps to actually paint a picture of the greatest version of your work. When I was a kid, I heard a story about how Scotty Pippin, epic US basketball legend, would start each practice session by standing at the 3-point line and taking one hundred shots, sinking every one of them. And he did it without a basketball. It was his mental warm-up - he was setting his aspirational identity as someone who could score three-pointers like that. He was creating his reality.

Before I knew anything about the neuroscience of visualisation and all that, as a 14 year old kid with a basketball, I would do the same kind of exercises, and it would help my game. In the car on the way to the courts, I would close my eyes and play Love You Right by Euphoria on my Sony Walkman (80's kid), and visualise all the moves I would do in the game. I was never 100% successful, but I definitely did better than if I had just spent the time staring out the window.

The second reason this aspiration identity exercise is important has to do with narcissism.

We all have it, and we all naturally attach “what I do” to “who I am.” It’s not entirely false to do this, but it isn’t the healthiest thing to lay on your fledgling book or idea. It would be like inviting a new friend out to dinner to meet your people, and then spending the entire night telling everyone how you and her met, instead of letting her speak for herself.

When we have an idea to share, or a book to write, there is a great danger that it stays in the shadow of our own insecurities, our pride, our filters, and whatever else is wrapped up in who we are. We end up writing about ourselves. We share our stories, our experience, our research, without every giving the idea space to speak and grow for itself. We take our little book out to meet everyone, and spend the night talking about ourselves.

So, spending some time asking your book what it aspires to be effectively give it its own voice. Just for a second, we separate ourselves from our ideas, and allow the idea to become its own person.

I recently played this game for myself, and thought it may be helpful to share one of my answers. The questions start at the surface, what does my book look and feel like? Then they drop to emotion-level, how does a reader feel when reading it? And then we ask the deeper philosophical questions, like why does it all matter?

Below is my response to one of those philosophical-level questions, “What is a book? What should a book be?"

—

A book should be looked forward to. Enjoyed, relished, easy to comprehend, with a lot of return power. It should be so great, you want to share it, you want to buy copies for your friends.

A book should move you. It should make you feel things, because it reminds you of some piece of yourself you’d forgotten all about until you opened it.

A book should point to something, just, not its author. It should point to the reader, to the good, or hope, or joy, an opinion, an aspiration.

A book should raise questions, and invite new conversations. It should encourage more discussion, not be the final veto on a topic.

You should feel proud to hold a book, like its very existence in your hand walks you taller, and laces your language with fresh nuance and intrigue.

A book should be a well that dips deep into your soul, drawing ancient waters of your own spirit for you to drink, perhaps with company.

A book should light you up.

—

After answering this question about what I think a book should be, I realised that the book had spoken for itself. It has raised its voice and shared its aspirational identity, this is what I want to be in the world.

If I am wise, I will hold on to these words, and consider them a true aspiration of the book I am yet to write. My book has spoken, and I should listen, and not be afraid of its lofty aspirations.

Because (of course) the aspirations we most fear call us forward to our best work.

On dreams and actions

Dreams are like ideas in the wind, as common as leaves in Autumn. They land in any open palm, and then they lift and fly off to the next hand.

Dreams are the payoff without the work. A man dreaming of his great future can spend an entire day in the vineyard without harvesting a single grape, while another bends to the work, with dreams only of presentness, and takes giant steps forward, purposeful within each moment, acutely aware of her surroundings, of time, of all the senses, and of the edifying joy of completing worthwhile jobs for a present goal.

In the past, I have judged those who didn't dream. I privately pitied them for their lack of ambition, or lack of hope, or whatever else I thought they lacked and I didn't.

I did this unconsciously, because I wasn't like them. I am a dreamer, after all. I burn hours of my day creating ideas out of nothing, and then sending them back to nothing. My mind is a firework of WTF and at the end of the day I have achieved nothing. The leaves fly to another hand.

Thankfully, I'm growing out of that mindset. My twelve-year-old son started a YouTube channel last week and has already posted three videos. I've had a channel for 15 years, and have posted once. Ever. No, I can't judge those who act more than they dream.

I still absolutely believe in hopes, dreams and ambition, but I'm developing a deep respect for the clean minimalism of a mind at work in the present. Of doing the work of today, before dreaming about all the tomorrows.

On the road: NoMad, Manhattan New York

The beauty of Jack Kerouac’s book “On the Road” is in the details. He travelled all over the place, and had a notebook with him, and just took tiny notes of what he saw, how he interpreted life. When it was time to write, he could connect the story with so many micro-moments of meaning, because those moments had their own tiny factoid.

I don't do that very well - take notes of the tiny moments in each day - but below is a quick story where I try to pay attention to the littlest things, just to see how it writes. This was from our time in New York, pre-Covid, and the plot is nothing at all - I just leave the hotel to get coffee...

—

When I step out of the elevator, the lobby is quiet. The coffee station is bare, the concierge mostly asleep. I say “mostly” because his eyes are open, but his mind is clearly elsewhere. Across the foyer, there is a sliver of sunlight on a couch, the only indication at all that it isn’t still nighttime. New York City has always struggled with catching the sunlight this early in the morning. Too many buildings too close together, I suppose.

I zip up my coat, and push through the glass turnstile doors into the street. Now there are others sharing my morning. The palette out here is all greys and browns: dark coats and hats, leather briefcases and satchels, functional umbrellas and scarves. The streets are still glassy from the night rains, each puddle a portal to an inverted world of skyscrapers and pastel skies.

My hands are deep in my pockets, my shoulders hunched against the chill. I’ve never been good with coldness - even as a kid, I would get cold so fast, and it would always feel like an icepick sinking into my spine. I take the three steps to the pavement, and join the murky grey stream of city regulars.

Honestly, I don’t know why I’m even out here. The hotel bed is warmer than this street corner. I tell myself I’m searching for beauty. Being new in a place allows a certain fleeting naivety, which sometimes leads to wonder, and so I’m walking the streets freezing my toes off for the wonder of it all. So much wonder, I try and convince myself. An umbrella up ahead just blew inside out, and my teeth are chattering.

What I really want, right now, is none of the wonder, and none of the beauty. I just want to return to my room. It’s warm there, and it has Rach, all asleep in a cosy bed. I could be under those covers right now, instead of shivering past another block of morning commuters. No one is looking up, and there’s a kind of eerie silence behind the dull city roar. There are engines running, brakes screeching, traffic lights tick-tick-ticking, a million clopping footsteps on the footpaths, but no voices. No birdsong. No faces.

I trudge along Madison Avenue with the grey coats and black umbrellas for another block, and turn onto East 27th. Somehow the ice-wind can turn corners, and it follows me all the way to the door of Birch Coffee, finding all the chinks in my armour of warmth and dropping little daggers down my spine. I push myself into the coffee shop wishing that I had never left the hotel.

“Welcome to Birch, honey.” Her eyes crinkle in the exact places that make it seem like she means it. “There’s a bit of a queue today, but try this while you’re waiting.” A small paper cup is pressed into my hands. It’s steaming, and it thaws my fingertips. “Single origin, Honduras, twelve days from roasting - we think today is the sweet spot!” And she’s off with a wink, sashaying through the bustle with her little tray of espresso cups and a smile for everyone.

I sip the coffee, and it runs through me like a lit fuse, like some delicious lava, heating my bloodstream and closing my eyes in overwhelm. The rest of my senses awaken in response - waves of conversation and laughter wash over me, the dull scream of the coffee grinders, the swoosh and hiss of the steam in the milk jugs, a Broken Bells song playing from somewhere in the ceiling. The fruity caramel notes in my cup mix with the rich nutty aroma of the store in a way that makes my mouth water.

I look up to a grid of golden sunlight stretched across the back wall, behind the baristas and their machines. Reflected light from the windows of the dark buildings down the street, a single warm beam that clearly wanted to be part of this morning with the rest of us. The customers have shed their coats, revealing bright reds and corporate blues and excellent silk greens. A rebirth of the human palette. Everyone here has faces, too. Faces that are seeking other faces, strangers that are connecting over the shared experience of frosty mornings and the nine-to-five battle ahead.

In this fractional moment of the day, Birch Coffee becomes a bottleneck of meaningful experience, a pinch in the hourglass between the cold dark morning and the discontented workplace. I can see all the frail human vessels being restored, filled up, tempered for what lies ahead. There is no status in this space, no labels or titles or hierarchies. Just faces, open and inviting and validating the human struggle. I am feeling warmer.

The door bumps into my shoulder as another cold soul presses in from outside. Face as grey as the street, hands shaking full with his umbrella and briefcase, eyes on the next step forward. Just trying to get in, or away, or above, or out. I reach for the door, swing it wide, makes some space and take his arm.

“Welcome to Birch.” I say with a smile, and he lifts his gaze, pale blues through rain-dropped bifocals. “You should try the the single origin - it’s Honduran, twelve days from roasting.” He raises his grey brows high, a slight smile.

I lean in conspiratorially, “I think today could be the sweet spot."

Piers Newton-John

Yesterday the latest edition of Dumbo Feather arrived. It’s a quarterly magazine filled with insightful articles and long-form interviews, and is my favourite publication. It arrived in my office letterbox, and I immediately started flipping through the pages. As I read, I walked, and the city streets were not safe for me. I was running into light poles and strangers, and just barely missing busses. Forget alcohol or texting, it’s the reading of a good book while in motion that is truly dangerous.

This is not an unusual experience for me, but this particular time I observed something about the way I read that I found interesting: I opened to the contents page and skimmed the topics and authors, and then immediately turned to page 52 - an article by Piers Newton-John. I didn’t know what the article was about, the title gave me no clues, and I didn’t make the decision consciously. I simply saw his name, and went to the page.

How does that happen? I wanted to read what he wrote, not because of WHAT he was writing about, but because of THE WAY he writes. That’s quite a power to hold, if you can be a writer that readers will read no matter what you are writing about.

I guess it’s that dynamic again of a good story, told well. Good thinking, but also good delivery. In Piers Newton-John’s case, I may have even decided to read him just on that good delivery. I like the way he writes.

I think every writer needs to have that aspiration: to tell their stories well. Not just to be a “thought leader” who is known for good ideas, but a writer who people want to read.

First drafts open the door

It’s 6:30am already, so pretty soon I’ll be getting in the shower, heading downstairs to wake the kids, then making the breakfasts and getting out of here. But, I need to write.

For my Story Coaching Framework, I created a diagnosis matrix, where we can place our idea on a scale of “good story” and “told well”, and see how strong it is. Right now, whatever I have to write would land right down the bottom of both areas.

Nothing to say, not written well.

But, that’s sometimes the point, isn’t it? We don’t START with a good idea all the time, and we certainly shouldn’t wait until we have the exact right words to put down. That would be a slow and tedious journey of self-criticism and very little output.

No, a good story told well doesn’t have to start at “good”. It can start at “crap story told poorly.” Just get something down, then consider the message, the content, the creativity, the love, and make the edits.

A shitty first draft unlocks the door and turns on the light. The edit puts all the crap from the floor onto the shelves. Then we take the pieces we need from the shelves, build our stories, and send them out into the world.

the few, and deeply

In workshops with health professionals, teachers or parents, I often speak about Joseph Campbell’s “Hero’s Journey,” and the key character roles within that archetype: The hero, the mentor, the victim, the villain.

The encouragement of course, is that although we play all the roles at some point in our life (or even in a single day), we should aspire to play the Mentor role when serving and relating to others. That is, we are not competing with the hero. We’re not trying to win, be the best, or any of that. We’re not even running the same race. Instead, we're sharing what we know so that the hero has her best chance of success.

In thinking about that Mentor role, you know, the Yoda character, Mr Miyagi, Gandalf, Professor McGonegall… I started wondering how a mentor might negotiate the internet.

In a mentor role, I would want to be a part of your life, but I wouldn’t want to serve you crap. It’s not my place to just dump everything that has ever happened to me on you. I don’t have the right to throw my life at you, and demand that your time is best served by listening to me.

If I’m sharing something with you, I want it to be worth your time, and valuable to you somehow. Hell, it needs to be valuable enough to be worth MY time writing it. I can imagine that would be Gandalf’s thinking too “we are living in dangerous and powerful times, hobbit, don’t let me waste my breath!”

I think a mentor would share less on the internet, but what they share would carry more weight.
“Here’s something I’ve learned that you might benefit from..”
“Here’s a statement from me, but it’s all about you: you are loved, you are worthy, you are powerful, you are beautiful, you can do this, you have great potential..."

I just can’t see Gandalf tweeting his life away about what he ate that morning, or where he is travelling right now, or how cute his pet dragon is. I see him learning things deeply, and sharing information with great respect, waiting for an invitation before investing into another's life. For the few who seek, he would share his knowledge.

I think that is the motto of every mentor:

The few, and deeply.

I know Gandalf isn’t on Facebook. I know he’s fictional. And I know the nature of the internet is that nobody asks permission: it’s all post post post post post post post. But the archetypes exist for a reason, and I’m going to try my damnedest to learn from them, stand in the respectful mentor role, and create content that is worth my time, and that contributes to the betterment of, well, you.

We are artists

We are artists. In ancient times, it was the artists who society looked to for hope and perspective. The artist saw the world differently to the worker or the politician, and so, could offer valuable insight into a situation. And perhaps more importantly, the artist could also offer an archetype of a solution.

Artists naturally reveal truths, often universal truths. And in doing so, their audience feel two things:

  • They feel known.

  • They feel hope.


It’s not up to the artist to implement cultural change, manage new systems, oversee task forces. The artist simply creates pieces of truth, that move an audience towards something they believe in.

A slower determination

Rach and I are reading Margaret Wheatley’s “Perseverance” this morning.

At 5:30am, the sun has just crested the horizon, the sky is already an apricot wash, the temperature is already 12 degrees.

And she and I sit naked in a bed, cradling our coffee cups, reading words so wise, we can’t do more than a page a day.

Wheatley writes that in the Chinese language, the character for perseverance is often the same as the one used for patience. Which I find really validating, to be honest. Perseverance often carries with it the expectation of pushing through, being tenacious, fighting forward. But, the ancient Chinese scribes used the character for slowing down, resting and waiting, managing during a slower organic growing of oneself.

I think it’s one thing to have a deadline, work all night, “persevere" to complete a task - it’s cinematic, right? The audience applauds when the lawyer doesn’t sleep for a week and finds the loophole to win the case.

But, it’s a much more courageous thing to believe, and do, over a longer, slower period of time. We need more than adrenaline when the timeframe is months and years. When the work is a life’s work.

We need patience. Grace for ourselves. It’s a slower determination that lasts the distance of a lifetime. And that’s a whole different skill set.

Perseverance doesn’t yield. It sees us through to the end. It sees the difficulties and pushes through. But it’s not a fight. More, a deep resilience that gets us through the mundane, the everyday. It’s a daily acknowledgement:

"I am everything, and I am nothing, both at once.
And I will go softly forward ever forward into this life, with patience and determination.
I will grow as the tides and rivers grow, in ebbs and flows, but ever strengthening.
There is no hurry."

Writing is just doing the work

Writing is really just doing the work, isn’t it?
We build our skill set and unique perspective of the world and of people, and then, we just have to sit down, lock out the hours, and write.
And on the other side of all the work, we are writers.

We are souls first

I think someone who studies writing will write better, but I don’t think that is enough. The greatest writer will just have created a really pretty, but empty, page. What I mean is that our art, our unique style, comes from somewhere else. It can’t quite be trained.

Don’t get me wrong - I want, and desperately appreciate, the training. But an artist who learns the techniques of brush strokes and acrylic paints will not a masterpiece create. The masterpiece is born from somewhere deeper. And in that sense, I really believe I have a chance at writing things that matter, and that are meaningful.

What got me on to this thinking was a conversation with Jenni that I had last night. She said she loves to write, but that she hasn’t written for a long time. She said that when it really matters, like when she needs to write a report or a thank you letter to someone at church, she just does it naturally, and the writing is awesome.

I told her that she has always been that way, and that I have a shoebox full of letters from her, from the 15-year-old her, that probably read the same as the letters she’s writing now. I think we are first of all heart and inclination, and technique follows.

We are souls first, completely alone in our unique diverse speciality, and when we write, we are simply opening our shells, and doing our best to shape the outflow.

Which gives me so much hope.

Chasing ourselves

“Rachel Callander, award-winning photographer, gives up wedding photography to evangelise the Health System.”
“Nathan Maddigan, award-winning photographer, gives up wedding photography to persue authentic story craft.”

It doesn’t matter, really. What the papers say. What the fans say. What the critics say.

What matters, is that we chase ourselves.

What I mean is, every day of our lives, we are learning more about ourselves, what we love, what we believe in, what we despise. And the more we learn, the greater the responsibility to act.

We need to chase down our authentic core. Every time we unearth a clue, every time we discover a piece of the puzzle that is “us”, we must chase it. We can’t just ignore what we know to be true about ourselves.

I’ve done it, the ignoring-my-true-self thing. I experience a moment of revelation, of what I truly love in life, where I actually want to put effort in to achieve. And then I shut it down. I’m afraid of the work, or of failure, or of success. So I push it down, and ignore it.

And when I do that, I shrink a bit. I become smaller, weaker. And I’m reminded of Viktor Frankl’s words,

“When a man cannot find meaning, he numbs himself with pleasure.”

And I’m reminded to return to the chase, keep learning, trying, changing. To not give in to the fear or give up for the comfort. To honour everything that is weird/unique/different in me, honour the calling, and to keep chasing.

Work that matters

I wrote this three years ago, but it feels right to post it here, now. It’s a slow process, doing the work you think matters, but it absolutely matters.

Jan 2018

It’s midnight, and I can’t sleep. I wish there was a great inspired reason, but to be honest, I probably had a bit too much caffeine too late in the day. So, instead of sleeping, I’m out here on the balcony of our 6th floor apartment, watching conversations on the street, and drinking whisky, and writing. A truck just drove by, loaded up with Christmas decorations. Like a giant tinsel-spider, folded up and put to rest for another year.

The world is getting back to work.

And so are we. Rach and I. We took some time out, drove 400 kilometres to the southernmost tip of Western Australia, and made our plans.

We said, “Life is not long. We have to do meaningful work”.
We said, “No matter what, we need to do work that matters.”
We took stock of what we have, and what we need to get our message out. We pooled all of our stuff, everything of value.
We climbed a mountain, and talked about Love.
Rach said the clouds felt closer up here.

Tonight Rach sold her piano.

Empty and dark shall I raise my lantern

“If this indeed be the hour in which I lift up my lantern, it is not my flame that shall burn therein. Empty and dark shall I raise my lantern, And the guardian of the night shall fill it with oil and he shall light it also.”

- Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet, 1923.