Rhodes

Hephaestus Season

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Birthdays have a way of making me look back and take inventory. This year, I’m amused by how familiar the conclusions are. I’ve spent twelve months reading, thinking, traveling, trying things, etc - and somehow I’ve ended up rediscovering what I thought I’d understood before. The great lessons of my life don’t seem to change very much - I just keep forgetting/finding them again.

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What’s worked?

• clarity/essentialism¹

• fewer, better inputs

• pausing for wisdom

• spelling things out

• a rhythm of work/play

What hasn’t?

• scattered ambitions

• unfiltered consumption

• rushing my reactions

• communicating in shorthand

• too little/too much

HESSE: “We are not going in circles, we are going upwards. The path is a spiral; we have already climbed many steps.”

I think the key insight is the path’s orbiting quality.

I’m learning to consistently re-center: around and around, again and again. Progress seems to be less about leaving my struggles behind than learning how to encounter them from a higher vantage... and developing a talent for coming home to myself.

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It also helps to stay o p e n.

If my current plans succeeded, just as they are, I’d only get more of my present self. But openness doesn’t know what’s ahead, it has no rigid idea of what’s needed...

And the truth is, neither do I.

Maybe that’s why I like this room so much: old stone, new forms, each making the other stranger and more alive.

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There is no such thing as starting over too many times.

I have never lived this day before. I am free to start it fresh. Whatever has happened is just a memory; whatever comes next is genuinely new. Now is the only reality - and each moment offers me the chance to begin again.

XXXVI

It’s Hephaestus season: what’s right for me + good for the world.

1. Essentialism says: “You need less than you think... ‘enough’ is a feeling... scale down and taste the sweetness of this freedom.”