I have been thinking about this idea a lot this year.
How might art save us in this dark year?
How might art offer a new imagination to representation for social justice?
How might creativity move us from despair?
In our solitude, we might feel less alone. Less isolated. If there were greater sense of purpose, we could read whatever we always wanted to read.
Seeking mastery, we might learn how to learn new hobbies - from cooking to scrapbooking.
So much to learn and now we have this time this year, but we wish it away to get back to normal. The business of traveling and jetting around the world. Now we zoom.
Wherever we go there we are.
How do we chase success?
How do we fear failure?
How do we strive for mastery?
To learn, to grow, to live. I wonder...
Listen to this:
Brené Brown: Hi everyone, I’m Brené Brown, and welcome to the Dare to Lead Podcast. This is such a great conversation. Grab your journal, grab a pen and a piece of paper, you’re going to want to take notes on this one. It is somewhere between a full-on, geek out kind of nerdriffic conversation and just wholeheartedness. And for me, personally, moving conversation with Dr. Sarah Lewis. So it’s a two-part series. This is Part One. We talk about her book, The Rise: Creativity, the Gift of Failure, and the Search for Mastery. And Sarah and I talk about why the word failure doesn’t quite capture the often transformative experience of falling and beginning again. We also talk about the difference between success and mastery. And for me, this is so important because mastery is very important to me and not something we talk about enough. And we also talk about the power of setting audacious goals that are right outside our grasp. I cannot wait to bring you this conversation. I think you are going to love it. Dr. Sarah Lewis, it’s moving, it’s a moving conversation.
Since the 1960s, researchers have been scrutinizing a handful of patients who underwent a radical kind of brain surgery. The cohort has been a boon to neuroscience — but soon it will be gone.
"Vincent Harding was wise about how the vision of the civil rights movement might speak to 21st-century realities. He reminded us that the movement of the ’50s and ’60s was spiritually as well as politically vigorous; it aspired to a “beloved community,” not merely a tolerant integrated society. He pursued this through patient-yet-passionate cross-cultural, cross-generational relationships. And he posed and lived a question that is freshly in our midst: Is America possible?"
Excerpt:
Tippett:When you say that we, as human beings, have a built-in need for stories, what your work shows is that we human beings also know what to do with stories, right? So that, as you say, the young people you work with know to take those stories as tools and pieces of empowerment in this day, this year.
Harding:For their own best work. Because now, it’s a powerful time in this country for young people and others to be asking the question, “And what are we for?” Do we exist for some reason other than competing with China or finding the best possible technological advances? Are there some things that are even deeper that we are meant for, meant to be, meant to do, meant to achieve? Jimmy Baldwin used to like to talk about us achieving ourselves, finding who we are, what we’re for, and making that possible for each other.
So you’re right about — the story — just as you were speaking, what I was thinking about, Krista, was when the mother with the baby at her bosom starts telling stories is clearly not just to pass on information. What I find is that, even in some of the strangest situations, most often where I go, where I speak, where I share, I start out by asking people to tell a little of their stories. And it is amazing what people discover of themselves, of their connections, of their community. It’s wonderful.
Tippett:You know, I’ve learned that too. To ask someone even to tell a little of their story is to give them a gift because we don’t get asked that question. And we do learn as much as we tell. You wrote a very important book, Hope and History.
"James Baldwin, my famous Baldwin quote, and he has a gazillion, obviously. But my favorite Baldwin quote is, “The interior life is the real life.” The interior life is the real life. “And the intangible dreams of a person may have a tangible effect on the world.” It’s basically saying, what one can imagine, internally, what one can think about when nobody knows, when nobody’s around, one’s secrets, could shift human life. What an amazing thing to think about.
And my role, even with Stamped and remixing — and the reason we called it a remix is because it’s not a YA adaptation, because I actually rewrote the entire book.
I wanted — we, he and I both — wanted to figure out how we could tap into the imagination of young people. And when it comes to books around race, or when it comes to history books, usually they are presented to students, not humans."
Which lead me to listening to James Baldwin on YouTube.com
"Mavis Nicholson speaks exclusively to American Civil rights activist and renowned Playwright novelist, essayist, poet, and social critic James Baldwin. First shown: 02/12/1987"
From YouTube.com:
Author James Baldwin taped a candid and fascinating studio interview at WCKT - Miami in 1963. Featured in this edition of the long-running program, "Florida Forum": questions by an in-studio audience and a panel of local journalists.
bio: James Arthur Baldwin (August 2, 1924 -- December 1, 1987) was an American novelist, essayist, playwright, poet, and social critic.
Baldwin's essays, for instance, "Notes of a Native Son" (1955), explore palpable yet unspoken intricacies of racial, sexual, and class distinctions in Western societies, most notably in mid-20th century America, vis-à-vis their inevitable if unnameable tensions with personal identity, assumptions, uncertainties, yearning, and questing.[1]
Some Baldwin essays are book-length, for instance, The Fire Next Time (1963), No Name in the Street (1972), and The Devil Finds Work (1976).
His novels and plays fictionalize fundamental personal questions and dilemmas amid complex social and psychological pressures thwarting the equitable integration of not only blacks yet also of male homosexuals—depicting as well some internalized impediments to such individuals' quest for acceptance—namely in his second novel, Giovanni's Room (1956), written well before the equality of homosexuals was widely espoused in America.[2]
Baldwin's best-known novel is his first, Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953).
James Baldwin Speaks! "America, it is not the Negro problem, it is your problem!"
Speech to the Los Angeles The Non-Violent Action Committee December, 1964. NVAC was formed by militant dissenters from the Congress of Racial Equality. The talk includes a question and answer session.
In a powerful talk, educator Eldra Jackson III shares how he unlearned dangerous lessons about masculinity through Inside Circle, an organization that leads group therapy for incarcerated men. Now he's helping others heal by creating a new image of what it means to be a whole, healthy man. "The challenge is to eradicate this cycle of emotional illiteracy and groupthink," he says.
1,516,234 views TEDxNewYork | November 2014
"As a teenager, Ismael Nazario was sent to New York’s Rikers Island jail, where he spent 300 days in solitary confinement -- all before he was ever convicted of a crime. Now as a prison reform advocate he works to change the culture of American jails and prisons, where young people are frequently subjected to violence beyond imagination. Nazario tells his chilling story and suggests ways to help, rather than harm, teens in jail."
I’m imagining what would be happening if it were Black people across the nation defying stay-at-home orders and demonstrating in large groups against the law.
Riot units would be breaking up rallies. Tear gas would be flying. Jails would be filling up. Trump would be raging.
FROM TED.com
"Stress. It makes your heart pound, your breathing quicken and your forehead sweat. But while stress has been made into a public health enemy, new research suggests that stress may only be bad for you if you believe that to be the case. Psychologist Kelly McGonigal urges us to see stress as a positive, and introduces us to an unsung mechanism for stress reduction: reaching out to others."
— Kelly McGonigal (@kellymcgonigal) April 8, 2019
NOTE - Kelly McGonigal retweeted:
We’re excited to launch StoryCorps Connect, a new free platform that enables you to take part in the magic of a StoryCorps interview — all while doing it remotely. Find out how you can connect with a loved one in a new way today: https://t.co/scKXuq84wz
