Breathing in the Year in the Water Rabbit
Eight Ways of Existing in Time [Good Life Newsletter #37]
Happy Lunar New Year of Gui Mao, the Water Rabbit (🎉!)
And welcome back to the Good Life Newsletter, -- with quotes, links, and events from me, Sean Waters.
This is #37, with some reflections on types of time and an invitation to the February Starts of the Wisdom Workshop.
I’ve been asking questions I often return to:
How do our cultural conceptions of time impact our experience?
What if time was an art?
💎 Quotes I'm Considering
“The Year of Water Rabbit is going to be a gentler year. We’ll have time to take a breather. We’ve been in the tunnel for the last few years, and the light is getting bigger now.”
― Theiry Chow, Contemporary Geomancy Consultant in Hong Kong
“I had not loved enough. I’d been busy, busy, so busy, preparing for life, while life floated by me, quiet and swift as a regatta.”
―Lorene Cary, Writer
"Everything observable to the senses is subject to change and therefore in motion . . . there are interlocking cycles of change . . . one cannot bid the winds and waves to cease, but one can learn to navigate treacherous currents by conducing ourselves in harmony with the prevailing processes of transformation —and thus weather the storms of life."
―Jon Blofeld, in his translation of the I CHING
"Every life is a point of view dierected upon the universe. Strictly speaking, what one life sees no other can. Every individual, whether person, nation, or epoch, is an organ, for which there can be no substitue . . . Reality happens to be, like a landscape, possessed of an infinite number of perspectives, all equally veracious and authentic. The sole false perspective is that whcih claims to be the only one there is."
―José Ortega y Gasset, in “The Doctrine of the Point of View”
🔗 Fun Links for Breathing with the Water Rabbit
1.) The generative insights of Chinese Philosophy : Five-Phase Theory (Wuxing) and how it applies to who we are and how we move through time for health and wellness.
2.) Living life as a work of art : the magic and awe of creativity : Rich Roll’s recent interview with Rick Rubin. Sometimes it helps not to rush. He’s also on Tim Ferris.
3.) One of my favorite essayists making a compelling argument for decoupling time with money in Saving Time : Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock.
4.) Understanding the power of human biological time— Daniel Pink’s “When: The Scientific Secret to Perfect Timing” — and this overview of chronotypes and sleep.
5.) Getting a theoretical foundation for a day of real rest? We have Abraham Heschel’s incredible work on the Sabbath. … a nice overview of how he treats space and time.
⭕ Towards a Typology of Time
There are at least eight types of time.
[] calendar time of quarters, months and weeks,
[] clock time of hours, minutes, seconds,
[] natural time of days, moons, lunar and solar years,
[] seasonal time of organic change, compost, growth, harvest,
[] biological time of the human heart, breath, and chronotype,
[] universal time of being in the flow, a sense of no-time,
[] musical time of melodic phrasing, movement, emotions, and
[] experimental time focused on a creative project or inquiry
I’m interested in how these types of time overlap— especially in our capacity for experimental time to rest, create, and breathe into our hours and days and seasons.
There’s a playful inquiry here :
How do I create, cultivate, and protect time for what I really care about?
Taking three deep breaths helps. But so does starting and finishing some formal experience or experiment. And that’s one potent way of approaching a “wisdom workshop” : a set amount of time to play and explore something that matters.
📅 February Starts
We’re playing with time in two workshops Starting in February:
Tuesday February 7th. Cohort #1 of the Art of Living Beautifully.
To explore ten creative habits from perennial world wisdom and modern psychology of creativity. Real-Time! So stoked on this one!
Twelve weeks. $850 buy-in. Scholarships available.
Wednesday, February 8th. Cohort #13 (!) of Writing the Good Life.
To expand our capacities for mindful writing and authentic becoming. How can a daily writing habit help us cultivate lives worth examining?
Seven weeks. $700 buy-in. Scholarships available.
~~~~
🎵 And for some live musical time,
Upcoming livestreams. If you’re in northern Colorado, original music at The Forge Publick House on Jan 28th, Feb 25th, and March 31st. All events 8pm-10pm, free, 21+.
👋 We’re co-creating a higher education for well-being. In 2022, we had over forty participants from seven countries, and our alumni include learning consultants, school founders, leaders, counselors, coaches, dancers, sales experts, early retirees, college students, and freelance artists.
Curious about what it’s like to enroll? Here's what our participants have said about their experiences and outcomes in the Wisdom Workshop.
~~~~~
Here’s to cultivating our own vantage points,
hope to get to see you in February,
Sean
😊 Thank you for your support! ~ your referrals, feedback, and conversations mean the world to me.
Please do unsubscribe if you don't want to hear from me about emergent learning or music. ✌