 The OGM call for Thursday, May 25, 2023, we just missed some good humor. And science. Exactly. Yeah. If I can just continue, somebody who has been to this call once or twice and Jerry, you know her, you know her, it's Jenny from Holland. She insists that you can't tell jokes online in Zoom. So I guess we just had a great example of how you can. We've just proved her theory twice now. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I referenced because Ken had the meteorological humor just a moment ago, which we also missed. Can I repeat that for the record? For the record, we see that San Francisco is cool because Sacramento sucks. Now you have to explain it, I think again. Okay. So. No, don't explain it. That's the part. You know, if you got to explain a joke, it's not funny. It's what they say. You know what? If you don't work for it, you won't value it. So it is. Anyone who wants to know, can DM me and I'll explain the meteorological implications of why that's a true statement. Awesome. And I'll explain the science connection. Cool. Lovely to see everybody. Stacy, thanks for reminding me. And I think that the question was. Oops. There we go. Can I reframe it? Yeah, go ahead. How do you measure success? How do you define success? And you can answer either one. And I've forgotten. Were we talking about for GM or for you personally? Up to you. Speaker's choice. That sounds good. So. Oh my God. Sorry. Breaking news. Supreme court just devoted against. Giving the environmental protection agency. The authority to police the water pollution. And the clean air act. So. Wow. Wow. Tell why that might be a good thing. Maybe might. If people are doing that locally. They'll be more invested and they'll make better decisions. That goes to decentralization. I'm just a thought. That's if they think it's a priority. And if there's no mandate to do anything, they'll. It's. It's a better chance that they live there. It'll be a priority. I'm a first thought about success. When you get to move on to the next problem. And I have a thought about the Supreme court decision. It just gives permission for major polluters to keep on polluting. Exactly. Both. Cool. Yeah. I think that's a good question. I think that's a good question for the news and posting the article to it. Wow. Kind of crazy. So let's go to the question at hand, which is how do you define success? And you're welcome to talk about success for OGM success for yourself. Maybe success in general. And now accepting volunteers to jump in. If you're a volunteer, you can just jump in. And if you're a volunteer, you can just jump in. If you're a volunteer, you can jump in and jump out for next person up. That would work great. Yeah. And I think also don't feel like you can only participate once in this particular theme. Just jump in. If you want to. Define it a couple of different times, jump on in. And, and Gil. Gil is writing in the chat success depends on the domain of concern. Absolutely. So riff on the differences, if you wish. That would be great. Okay. So what are your thoughts on this each year? Do you want to expand on that just a little bit? Yeah, my rabbi once told me that. So it's stuck in my mind. That like when we have the holidays for Judaism. You want to make different mistakes than the year before. That's the goal. And it's an interesting goal. And I just want to personally apologize for overstepping boundaries. I think we'll discuss that offline. Thank you. Thank you. My old boss's signature line. Has been, I think still is forever always make new mistakes. And that's Esther Dyson. But at the end of each of her emails, it says always make new mistakes. And when she was editing my writings, it was really interesting because it totally great to make mistakes. And I think it's a great time that the same error showed up. I was like, no, no, no, haven't you learned that thing? You should internalize that. I guess that was a form of success. Stacey, go ahead. I would just want to add to what you and Eric just said. If you have to make mistake. Make them new. And success would be if they're different. Scott. And also as we come in and take turns into the conversation, feel free to pause for a moment as we jump in that way. We can blend in some of our check-in protocol as well. But floor is yours, Scott. This is a great prompt. So I initially started thinking about it in terms of clearly defined problems. And okay, I have a project. And the project's completed. Sort of like what Doug said, you know, you move on to the next problem. But a lot of the things we talk about in this forum are things that are unclear. We're kind of feeling our way through it and figuring out, and we may not have a success metric or the success might be different or changing as we go through it. And so I thought, what am I going to say here? And I realized something. I had something happen yesterday that I'll explain in a minute. So you know the old quote about happiness. If you chase happiness, you're not going to get it, but if you busy yourself with something else, it'll come and land on your shoulder. It's along those lines. It's sort of related to the idea of flow and that happiness is not something to be pursued. Happiness is something that happens while you're doing other things. And I thought, you know, for me, maybe success is that same thing. If I'm chasing it, then I'm not going to get it. And I'm not going to notice it until it lands. And I think, oh, that worked. That worked. And that relates to the theme that I'm seeing through a lot of the chat, which is trying new things, experimenting, making small low risk experiments and doing a lot of them. Because then you will, if you're paying attention, you'll stumble on success or little successes while you're experimenting. And so I don't know that that's kind of where my, my head is at with that is that success and happiness are two things that you shouldn't be pursuing directly, but they are going to happen as a result of your faithful pursuit of things that you think are through. And I think that's going to be one of the things that I think is going to happen. And that's going to be a re-evaluation of those as you get feedback from reality. So, I love that, Scott. And I think it was Hank, I heard talking about, and things should ensue, not pursue. Does that ring a bell from our conversations, Hank? Who am I thinking about them? No, I can't place that. Can say something more about it. I'm not sure what the results are, the results of an action, but they break if you try to pursue them directly. Brian Eno has a whole deck of cards called oblique strategies, where he was trying to say, hey, indirect approaches often work for things. I talk about this with trust, for example, if you hear someone say, trust me, like if your BS radar doesn't start glowing bright red at that moment, like you're probably not awake, but if they then do things that are trustworthy over time, like if they do things that they don't want to do, or trust, same thing often for love and happiness and all those kinds of things that they, they're not things that you can call into being by approaching them directly often. Something like that. Yeah, Stuart. This is an interesting time for me. I shared this with Jerry yesterday on it, on another call. After months of trying to run down what was going on with me and my health, I just got a diagnosis of multiple myeloma, which is a treatable and manageable form of blood cancer. And I just started chemo. So for me, success in it, it really is interesting when you're facing mortality and facing some level of severe physical pain. Bone pain is one of the symptoms. And there are many people who live for a long time with this disease. So please don't, don't write me off. Don't write me off. You'll have me to kick around for, for quite some time. But today I happened to feel really shitty because I just started chemo on Tuesday. And I think I overdid it in terms of, you know, physical activity. I was feeling so innervated and, and, you know, and the throne, the throne that this is to try and get back to the life that you live in, in some ways. So right now, you know, getting out of bed, getting meds into me and, and, and getting myself to the point where I can move around, you know, somewhat pain free is, is very, it's, it's a success. And so it's interesting how circumstances create different definitions of success for you as an individual. So, you know, looking at where we are as a culture in a society today and thinking back on my own progression through life. You know, what, what is success? How is it defined? You know, what were the values that I grew up with in the 1950s? You know, go out, you know, find somebody to marry, make some money, be a success in the eyes of, you know, ordinary social norms, whatever they happen to be for you. And so it's interesting to look back by about age 35, I had, I had achieved all those things that, that traditional culture had said to me. And ever since then it's been a wonderful journey and quest. And I was just listening to a short talk by my friend and colleague Meg Wheely this morning about perseverance, distinguishing perseverance from the, the well-worn phrase of resilience. And I've looked back at, at, at my life and no matter. And I did this on a progression of some kind one time, no matter what was going on up and down in my own personal life, there was a level of perseverance about what I thought were important goals, whether they'd be writing goals, whether they'd be contributing to the social mix, whether they'd be helping certain organizations. And somehow I think I've persevered. And, and, and here I am continuing to persevere. And so there's a way in which, you know, the equivalents of perseverance and success for me, you know, they're kind of like, you know, hand in glove, you just keep going by what you think is important. And I think that that's a critical stance for our time. You know, we're all aware of the multiple wicked problems that we face as a culture, as a species, and the idea of getting up every day and continuing to do quote, your work, whatever you have discovered it to be. That's when you, when you put your head down in the pillow that I think is a wonderful measure of success, at least it is for me. Contributing to places where good work is going on, contributing to relationships that you're in, taking care of yourself and others, and are the people you love at the end of the day, are they laying their heads down in a place that you as a steward of relationships are taking care? Thank you. Thank you for the prompt, Stacey, and for reminding us of that. Thank you. Thank you. I like that you're a steward. How about we try to de at the end? You're a steward of relationships. That's actually very funny, Stacey, because, you know, fairly often, you know, someone will address me as steward, and I chuckle every time that happens. We need a new language, right? We need a new language. Finding our way to one. Love that. Thanks, Stuart. Doug, whenever you'd like. You can hear, Scott. You're muted. Oh, I thought, I thought Doug was saying something. Doug, you are muted and you just turned off your camera instead of your mute. There we go. Wait, no, Doug beat. Isn't Doug beat next in the queue? He is. And that's a, sorry. Doug. Doug first. I was, I was talking about Doug because he had his hand up. My apologies. Yeah, I am. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Stuart, I appreciate your share and Stacey, appreciate your prompt. And. And that's actually. And sort of where Stuart headed and left off is where I pick up, which is. What's been living for me is appreciation. As a, As a steady state, experiential emotional embodied reality. And finding that. Being in that place. As a, as a orientation. As a center of gravity and as a. Dynamic for me and for. As a center of gravity and as a center of gravity and as a center of. All the other people I come in contact with. And engage with them. All the other things I'm working on in collaboration. So I'm touching. So to find. A place in way of experiencing and relating. From appreciation. And to have. In the doing of that. An appreciation of value. For everybody involved. So it's not just. Good for me. But it's good for everybody. And. And experiencing and having that. Feels like success. Smells like success. And has a little bit of a joy straight chaser. Even. In context that are challenging. Even in context that. You know, revolve around. Tough times or, or. Frictions or speed bumps or whatever. So with that I'm complete. Thank you, Doug. You're reminding me of. You know, April came home once from yoga and the, and yoga very often whoever's teaching will sort of have a little. Kind of a sermon or just a sangha or a talk through. And this one was about small victories. A tiny wins just to celebrate small successes. And then I just realized that Annie Lamont has. Titled small victories spotting improbable moments of grace. You know, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. My moments of silence were always a little bit longer after Doug B. So I appreciate, I appreciate all the things that people are posting here. And what's, what's. What's resonating for me. I think someone said it earlier on. Is that except for the things that are quantitative deterministic specific measurable. It's always subjective. It's always contextual. And it's always an assessment. It's always a subjective determination by somebody. In relation to what they care about. And that's, you know, that's there in some of the quotes that we're seeing here. It. You know, it strikes me again as an example of where it's, it's dangerous to try to muddle the domains, the domain of the specific and measurable, the main of the subjective and contextual. And we get into a mess if we try to see them the same. And so the richness of this conversation is in the very personal. Dimension of it for everybody who's speaking. So thank you. I think success is sort of an elusive feeling. No, you can, you can feel. Like you've done. You feel successful in a. Metaphysical way or in, in a practical way and then one day in the next day, you know, something happens and. So it's very contextual. As Phil is just saying. And then it's oftentimes really removed from. Your physical. Well-being. Whether that's personal health or whether that's not your, whether that's not your physical health. You know, whether that's not your physical health or whether that's not your physical health. You know, I think that you need to sustain yourself. Have what you need to be comfortable. I think one. Measure of success that. That I may I feel I can actually anchor it down. Now. On my two kids and we have. Just really a great relationship. And I think that's really precious. And I think that's really important. I think that's really important. Children who actually care about you. And your well-being and. Who want to be. In contact and talk and connect. And so that's that I think is. Is a highlight of. Of. What I would consider we have. Been able to succeed with. But everything. Everything else is. Is. You know, It's. And now it's let's be already said the more you chase it, the more. The more it wants to get away from you. So, so, yeah, so I would say. The one. The one thing that I would claim as success is our relationship as our kids and to see them thrive and be successful. I think that's a great question. Thank you. I think you still have your hand up and Scott had a brief comment. Yeah, it's, it's a question. To Klaus just very quickly. Wonderful story about your children and your relationship now. Was that an intended. Success or was that something that you. Discovered later on and then can find those threads and how it happened. Actually, it really starts to become sort of a manifestation since we retired. And it's actually probably fairly recent. Because we had ups and downs and, and. We have now settled into, we want to be friends, you know, we want, and it's actually when you think about your own life, the importance of your relationship with your dad, your relationship with your mom, right? How important that is. So now in my mind, I understand my son. And the needs to, to have a dad that is proud of you and. Appreciate you and support and, and, and boosts you up. Right. And, and you can unload your, your, your concerns and your worries you become. I mean, my wife is the counselor to both our kids. And so that is, that is a relationship that, that formed actually later in our kids are both in their 30s. So yeah. So now this didn't just happen. Thank you. I think Stacy has a quick comment to follow on. Do you mind if she steps in for a moment? No. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. When you were talking, it really touched me because. Where I do feel there was a great successful relationship was with my dad at the end. We had a very, like a six week. Interesting story that I'll tell one day, but. I remember like the things that I remember on that thread from where I am now. Where he went. We're very successful. And I remember the doctor coming into the room because I would sit with him when he was intensive care, even when he was in a coma. And he told me, he said, I wish I had a daughter like you. And I know my dad felt that and he let me know it. And the greatest thing he ever said, the greatest thing he ever said to me that stays with me from like my middle point to now is always, I remember him one saying to me, he said, Larry, Larry was my ex husband. He said, Larry must be so happy. He was like, oh, I'm so happy to have you. He had started a new business and I was helping him and I found like a lot of loopholes and quick fixes. And I said, no, Dad, I said, I said, he's not it's like, it's like he's in competition. And I wanted to share that because. I think one of the leverage points, one of the places that can be shift. And I think why I've been drawn to come here. Has to do with what I'll call the M line. And I just want to be able to show both sides. On the other side, I do not have a very good relationship with my children right now. It's open, the heart, you know, it's open. They're all at different levels. So there were three different stories. And then I had a great one with Marley though. Me and Marley had the best. So Marley was my teacher. And at the end of his life, I definitely served him, but he served me his whole life. Thank you for letting me go first. Thanks, Stacey and Hank. I don't know if you stepped out of Q intentionally or unintentionally, but floor is yours. If you'd like it. Well, I stepped out intentionally because I was going to have a completely different kind of. Stegway and I'd rather. I'd rather hear some silence after what you said, Stacey, then then talk about something like I was going to bring in. I'll come in later. Why don't we just take silent and wait for you. Let's why don't we take a minute. And then what if Ken doesn't mind, I'd rather take a minute of silence. Let Hank finish this thread and then go to Ken. Start a new one. Thanks, Stacey. Thanks for sharing. Aside from the. I'm also in a somewhat emotional. Stage. Of. This year. And just before this call. I was on a call. With a close friend. From my early youth. Who I've been out of contact with. Many years and. He saw contact. And he's. Got stage four melanoma and. We were being very positive about. The process of. Reviewing life. While you're still around to do it. So. I would like to say as a follow up to what Stacey said. Success is remembering the things that. You once forgotten. Can be brought. Can be brought back into your consciousness. By unexpected contacts. With the past. And. Other than that, I put a couple of things which were rather personal into the chat about what success is. And. They resonate with a number of things other people have said. Success is figuring out how things work as you go along. Success is continuing to learn even when people say you're too old to learn. And success is doing the things you like and the liking the things you do. And. One of the things I like to do is come to these OGM calls. And. We had a conversation last week. I remember. Sparked. I. If I remember correctly. I remember. By comments by Doug. And. And also Scott. About how a year and a half ago or two years ago, there were a lot more people who came regularly. And. Now it seems to be down to about 10 or 12. And I've been thinking about that. All week since. Since that conversation took place. And in the. The way that Jerry rephrased the question about success. OGM or for yourself. I was. I want to make it a contribution about the success. Of OGM and these OGM cons. I'm not here every week, but I feel I missed something. If I miss a call. And I do my level best. To. Organize the rest of my life. Personal and professional. Around being able to be present for the call. And whether it's 25 people. Or. Or 10 people. Or the. Let's see the 14 were on the call now. For me, it's an uplifting experience. It's an always unexpected experience. And looking for a. Another word to express it. I keep thinking of it as a learning experience. And I'd like to express the idea that. This OGM call, maybe others as well. I take part in a number of other good OGM calls, but this OGM call is. For me, the archetype of an, of an online. Of a digital learning experience. It's creating what the Japanese call a bar. B. A. It's a shared context. We're co-creating new knowledge. And I think. It's. Often hard to do it in physical co-presence. And it's even harder to do it sometimes in. Digital co-presence. And I think. We. Succeed very well. And there's a core group that's. Here today and maybe a couple of other people who haven't been here for a while, but. Show up regularly. And I just. Would like to express the fact that. Having these calls as we do. And having the participation that we do and the mutual respect. That we do. Is for me a really good measure of success. So I think. Of success. Not in terms of the great peaks of, oh, wow, look at what I've achieved, but in terms of the great valleys I've come through that have had me wanting to give up. And being able to put one foot in front of the other, no matter how bad things are. And sometimes they've been really bad in my life. And. I didn't give up. And I'm still here. I'm still here. I'm still here. You bastards. You know. Because without that, I wouldn't be able to enjoy the success, you know, and. I just think that it's, it's very easy to get seduced by the positive side of success and forget. All the stuff, all the suffering we've each of us have had to go through. And I'm sure every single person on this call is their own share of. A very tough times that we've been through. But we didn't give up. We kept on showing up, kept on taking a breath, kept on putting one foot in front of the other. And dragging our sorry carcasses long until we could get into a place where we might experience a different level of success. And I think that's a really important thing to. Just bear in mind as we look at what success is. Thank you. I have to say, Scott, I don't think of them as failures. I just think of them as things that, that didn't work. I wanted them to. Cause failure has such a heavy emotional baggage to it. It gets attached to shame and stuff. There's no shame. I got it. Things that didn't work the way you wanted it to. I think it's a better way of saying that for sure. Yes. Yeah. I think you know the protocol, but just in case the floor is yours whenever you want to step in. I think it's a better way of saying that. Great. Thanks, Jerry. I really appreciate all the shares going on. Really making me ponder. I'm not video friendly today. Success to me is a smile. Which of course includes laughter. And it's really an interesting thing as I'm sitting here. And it's really interesting. As I'm sitting here thinking about how it's encompassing. An outcome and input in it. And a measure. So. Regarding an outcome. For myself. The smile is for myself. And then all for others, like my partner and my children and my family. And really sometimes it comes from deep listening. Like everyone is sharing. Sometimes the. Smile is a measure. I kind of like a smile index in a way. And sometimes it's an input. And it could change someone's day. You know, just a smile. And a Buddhist monk. I heard. I love this. He says something like when you smile. You're actually giving someone a flower. And when you, when you're at, you can smile with your eyes. You're actually giving them three flowers. Oh, I love that. Yeah. I love it too. And. And you can smile for yourself too. Myself. I would just put a fake smile on it sometimes just out of like. Look in the mirror and smile. And then I find myself. Learning how to smile and meditation now. Which, you know, when I breathe in. I feel the pain either mentally or physically. And when I breathe out. I feel the mother smile in me. Outcome. Measure and input. Very nice, Jesse. Thank you. Thank you. Outcome measure and input. I'm hearing that as breathing in. And breathing out. And breathing in. And breathing out. And the smile is a wonderful thing to call. Everybody just, you know, smile for a moment. And feel it happen. I feel the mother smile in me. Outcome measure and input. Very nice, Jesse. Thank you. Thank you. Outcome measure and input. And feel what happens to your body. And to your being, you know, I mean, even if the smile is, is, is. You know. Directed and not spontaneous. It ripples. So good, good practice. I'm, I'm, I'm remembering as, you know, listening to people in Ken and Scott talking about things, you know, successes, things that didn't work out. You know, the way that you wanted to, I remember that wonderful story that, you know, I think it shows up in Sufi and sad and acidic and other traditions about the old farmer and the horse. And folks probably know it's, I'm not going to retell it, but, you know, something happens. It's terrible. People say he says, well, maybe. And then something good happens there to recover that they say that's great. He says, well, maybe, you know, we'll see. And he has in the story has a kind of equanimity in the rise of all of events that other people are characterized as yes. And so be maybe moments of equanimity. Or a kind of what we're calling success in this conversation. I can see the floor is yours whenever you want to step in. I'm wondering if he hears us. Doug. Can you hear us Doug. That's me Doug. Yeah, Doug be just. But here's what, here's what I want to say. That I love the history of words and success is no surprise. It means moving out from a mirror. Which in the space of larger freedom. That's quite beautiful. Beautiful. That is lovely. Thank you. This is smaller scale and success and Stuart, I'll step in for just a sec. This is smaller, smaller scale than success. But a long ago I heard somebody. You talk about the grace factor and I adopted it. And the grace factor pick a small percentage, 3%, 2%, 5%, something small. And then think that whenever you're undertaking any kind of activity, you're driving someplace. You're going to get a flat tire. You're going to run out of gas. Something something's going to happen. It doesn't happen often. But then when that thing happens that normally would be like, ah, God, damn it. You can be like, oh, I just, I just got rid of some of the grace factor in my life and let you can sort of set some of that percentage of size like, okay, that solved that. And that connects to a bigger issue. I think that I also adopted, which is how you handle inputs is just immensely enormously important. When, when bad news shows up, when events happen, if you can sort of keep your head and just find the equanimity in some way, regardless what's going on really often, the thing that happened isn't nearly as bad as you thought it was. Your responses is better and therefore converts the situation, whatever it might be. But when we're triggered is when an involuntary response emerges from us because of something, because of history, because of outlook, because of anything it might be. And then we're not sort of in control very much. Like being triggered is, I think, an involuntary thing usually. That's, that's how I, at least I think of triggering. And handling incoming things with grace. The other use of the word grace, maybe, is I think an important human trait, a thing I really admire and an important and lovely thing off to you whenever you'd like to do it. Yeah, so two things I want to mention. One, just to punctuate what Gil said about breathing. You know, the whole notion of inspiration, inspiration and just the magnificence of recognizing and stopping for a moment. The miraculous fact that we are alive, that we have these, you know, bodies that ambulate, that we have these minds that can think, that we have these vehicles that carry our soul through life as long as we're living. And I just find it, you know, lately I've developed this practice of laying down in bed at night and actually just breathing for a while and feeling myself breathe and feeling the joy of being alive. Just, it's just extraordinary to recognize how we as human beings, you know, have these qualities that so many external phenomenon are modeled after. You know, computational power of our brain and mind, just extraordinary, ability to ambulate extraordinary, ability to appreciate, to taste, smell, touch, feel. It's just magical in certain ways, you know, that food grows from the earth, that babies are born, that erotic pleasure is available. I mean, it's just magical when you really start thinking about it and we have moved so far away from that in the concrete worlds and the built worlds that we have created. Thinking that that's what life is. And it's not, and that relates to success in terms of, you know, early drivers. Thank you, Eric. Early drivers probably have most of our successes here. And the other thing that I wanted to say is a reminder of the Hopi prophecy from 2000, the idea that great, massive, powerful currents will be coming and that the people who try to cling and hold onto the shore slash the way it is will be torn apart by the power of the currents and that getting out into the current, letting go and being able to swim, walk one foot in front of another, one stroke in front of another is kind of a key to survival in some ways, that piece of perseverance that we've, many of us have touched upon. Every time you've said perseverance, Stuart, I for some reason have heard the British pronunciation in my head, perseverance. I don't know where that came from. I was doing a lot of work in the late 90s in English speaking countries all over the world and one of the things that I noticed, without any consciousness at all, that after about a week in country, you just pick up the pronunciations and you listen to yourself and you just kind of chuckle a little bit. You come back to the U.S. saying aluminum. The redundancy of it all. Has everybody had a chart? I think, John Kelly, you're listening in. I don't know if you can step in, but you are welcome to. Yes, I am listening in. I am parked outside my client where I'll have to go in pretty soon. I really have appreciated this. Once again, this OGM group, the image is coming to me as stumbles through profundity, but it does. There's stumbling definitely going on, but there's also profundity at every turn as people discover, reveal, expand upon their experience. I had an imperfect analogy, but it's kind of fun to play with these things even if they're off a little bit. I was thinking about a diet and I was thinking about a diet over a lifetime. When we're babies, we need the food to be very easy to digest. It has to be crunched up. There are certain things that we should not have as babies. They would just overwhelm our system. Then we pass into our young years and we can eat just about anything and we try to demonstrate that. We try to down as many burgers and fries and other strange things as we can. Then we get through life and then we realize, you know what? That's not going to work. I'm going to have to reduce some things definitely. By the way, I appreciate certain things that I didn't appreciate earlier, like salads. I'm not as fond of dessert. It's a lovely thing to have, but less. Then you move into your senior years and you say, I really do need to be careful here about what I'm putting away. Of course, I need to eat. People who stop eating, they're not going to be here very long. I need to eat carefully. I need to be judicious about what I'm putting into my body. Just apply that curve to the idea of success. When you're young, well, put it another way. It's not so much age, it's life experience. If you have been deprived of success, then you'd like to get it in the predigested form. You'd like the baby mix. A birthday will do fine. A friend calling you up. Anything will work if you've been deprived. Then when you get used to it, then you start taking it in strides, start taking it for granted. We'll achieve this goal, we'll achieve that goal. Yeah, cool. That's kind of the adolescent success. Then of course, you move into the adulthood and the maturity and you realize this is a good thing. This is a little like sugar. It's great, it's essential, but you've got to be careful. You've got to recognize that it's a indicator of something that's larger than what it actually manifests or how it actually manifests in the way in which we're getting it. Ultimately, the final image I got of success was that you belong to the context you're in. You see how by being in that context, you also belong to the bigger picture. That's one version of success. And I now need to go take care of somebody who has Parkinson's. And he reminds me how lucky I am. So have a good day, folks. Thank you. Thank you for that. They see, thank you for looking around. Can I suggest that we take a breath? And then I saw that then we could, like this would be the second third and you could run that whole thing and I'll just let you know that Doug C. I think it's something he wanted to say when we come back, but I'm not sure. And then I'm going to be quiet now. As part of the S protocol, because that's like what I'd like to do. So you're asking that we take a moment of silence. Yeah. Why don't I let's let's go quiet for a little bit. I'll bring us back out. Thank you. Michael, you have arrived in the middle of a moment of silence, which I will now complete and then I'll bring us back out. Thank you for the gift of the sun in your sky. Yeah, I figured I would leave it up there. You know, I was going to be off camera. Beautiful. Come out of the silence. This moment is feeling a tiny bit like Quaker meeting, which is a lovely thing. And for those of you who've never attended Quaker, the way Quakers worship. It's basically an hour's quiet meditation with other members of the meeting during which nobody has paid to give a sermon. There's been a couple of types of quick rhythm. They might read some scripture before or after, not in the ones I attended, but at any moment during the meeting, somebody might stand up and have a message for the meeting. There's a whole, there's a whole kind of thinking about what's, what's called vocal ministry. Because the principle of Quakerism is that if we don't minister to each other, nobody will. And I love, love love the way that puts the responsibility. I love the way that puts the responsibility. I love the way that puts the responsibility. I love the way that puts the responsibility. I love the way that puts the ministry on everybody in the meeting. That that's one of the little jujitsu moves of Quakerism that I really admire. If you don't outsource thinking about spirituality to somebody who's paid for the job. You actually do it together or you don't get it done at all. And that, that shift of responsibility and, and presence is really wonderful. I think that's one of the things that you can do is say something. It's not typical to converse through the messages. You don't respond to other messages. You just let them be individually. And if you have 10 messages in a meeting that's known. Colloquially as a popcorn meeting 10, 10 messages are sort of too many. Which is, which is interesting. And the message could be a minute. It could, it could be a short. Somebody might recount a story or something that happened to them and what it made them think it might be three minutes, whatever, but it's not. So I was having a little moment of that with you all, which is lovely because. Quaker meeting for me has always just been in physical spaces and Quaker meeting houses. And Quakers also avoid all religious. So they don't have a congregation. They have a meeting. They don't have a church. They have a meeting house, et cetera, et cetera. They avoid. And to some point they've spoke plain speak. I'll just refund this for just a second more. So if there was a while it's not traditional anymore where they talked about first day, second day, third day, first month, second month, third month, because the names of the days and the names of the months are all about ancient gods and goddesses and whatever else. And they were trying to sort of be removed from all of that. And then they also in history and probably still in some communities referred to each other as the and Val, which some people see as maybe pompous speech, but it came directly from the idea that God is in everyone. And if I sort of raised the way I address you, that would work. That would be great. And Ken, you were waving. Does that mean you've got to go? No, it's me who has to go. Sorry. I just wanted to say, Jerry, when you talked about me and now, you know, it reminded me of Martin Booper's I doubt, which to me, shorthand all about creating subjective and real relationships in people, you know. So thank you. Thanks everybody. And Stuart, I didn't know how, I didn't know how broadly you were going to share your news. I really appreciate you were talking about it here. Yeah. Thank you. We'll be in touch offline as needed. Okay. As you want. I'll let you take lead. Thank you. Thank you so much. Eric, you're next whenever you feel like stepping in. Hello, everybody. So this is a great topic. I mentioned Randy Poush. He wrote a book and did a video called the last lecture when he knew he was dying thinking about how do I tell my kids? How do I tell my students? He was at Brown University. And I recently learned about some of the work he did because I've been looking into the intermediate system. And as I do my vintage computer projects, I learned things and I'm fascinated by what they were able to do at Brown in the 1990s with a Macintosh else, whatever it was that used CI to or something, a server. And so there's videos on the internet for anyone wants to see all that. But yeah, I'm constantly learning and it seems that learning is what I enjoy. Not necessarily jumping into new projects or. I mean, I could think about ideas and play with them, but I guess my perspectives have changed ever since. I'm now in my fifties, so now I guess perspectives change around that time. Yeah, so I've been through some difficult few months at work and with a big implementation, global stuff that I've never imagined I'd be working on and dealing with changes to that. But yeah, but where is my real life purpose? It's not at work. Okay, so and I'm seeing other opportunities to connect with people and share music and it did something this weekend, which was fun at I'll post a video of it in the chat. It was a vintage computer event where I played some music. I posted it in the music meta for anyone who wants to see it there. Okay, so yeah, so the Jewish holiday of Shavuas is approaching and that's a time for study. And the book of Ruth is a topic of study which you can get some interesting insights from that. And it's related to Pentecost or in the book of Acts. So the universal time of, you know, well, what laws do we follow as human beings for morality and ethics? That kind of thought for it's for anybody who wants to think that way. So just here growing with all of you. Thank you. Eric, what's the date for Shavuas this year? I think it's Friday night, but I'm doing something for tonight with a friend. So you could just check online. Usually how bad has the official dates. It does start Friday night. Yeah. And traditionally there's an all night study. Like, you know, it's on down to dawn study process this year because it's falls on the beginning of the Sabbath. This can be a Friday afternoon study in Berkeley. It's quite remarkable. All the Jewish denominations from ultra orthodox to crazy wild hippie all come together with a study process with each of you know, eat folks from each tradition teaching. It's a it's a very unusual and delicious blending of traditions that don't usually have a lot to do with each other. So I think that's a good idea. I think that's a good idea. That sounds remarkable. Eric, thank you. And Doug see just to make sure you have the floor whenever you want to start talking, but I don't know if you're like. Just giving us a pause or not. But it's yours to. To do. No, I'm here. Okay. I've been having a difficult time. I was the zoom frame is cut off by the top of the laptop. Like that. So I don't see the hands. Excellent. So I'm glad I'm glad. I want to say. Go ahead. Good. What's on my mind is we tend to think of success is going along with big projects and big things. But in fact, we're surrounded by successes all the time. And I believe we feel them. The cat comes in the room and I looked to my left. That was my intent. And I succeeded and I feel it. It's like we have this image of being in a fish tank surrounded by goldfish, each of which is a success of some motion. That we undertook. To do. So anyway, that's my thought is just successes. It's everywhere. I remember once thinking that every part of this is. Every posture is a yoga posture. So you do everything that you do, moving your head, biting your lip. We do it well or not. But generally we succeed and can feel it. And the thought. Thank you, Doug. Doug B brought us toward appreciation a lot. And I think appreciation and gratitude or successes as well. There are appreciations of the small things you just pointed us to. I don't know if I should go, which, which way I should go. You want to hear the goldfish story or the shabuah story. Man. Hands up if you want to hear the goldfish story. Goldfish. I think the shabuahs. I think it's shabuahs. I think it's shabuahs. So probably around 2014. When I was like right in the middle, it was right. 2015 is when I decided to get a divorce 2014. I was still serving on the board of the temple. And I woke up. And I went to see, I went to Hubad services. Over in Westchester. And I didn't know what it was. I wanted to try it. So I got, I remember, I got. I think it was three o'clock in the morning. And I was like, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. They were all men there. They were so wonderful to me. And I got to. That particular man and his son that was there. I don't. I think I had two little boys that were there too, maybe. But when he spoke, I listened. I thought about it. I reflected some things that. Well, maybe it was this, they were so. They were so wonderful to me. Speaking about that particular group. Not every single Hubad group around the world. That particular one. The members that were there at that time in that moment. We're really loving. Maybe that's why I showed up with that one. I don't know, but I wanted to share that. Thanks, Stacy. And just before Scott steps in. Michael and Carl, thanks for joining. We're our topic today is what does success look like for you. And that could be success personally. It could be success for a jam. It could be success for anything. So we've had a lovely conversation so far. And you are welcome to step in. Whenever you'd like. And Scott, the floor is yours. So riffing off of Doug. About noticing successes. You know, turn my head and. I succeeded in turning my head and looking at the cat, which was my intent. Okay, so success. What I've been noticing in the last couple of years is. How that's embedded in language. The creative power of language. And how. You can, you can get this into a million different ways. You can have thoughts become things or you can have. Every word is a spell or you can have. The fact that. Every magic user in any. Dungeons and dragons game has to speak. They have to be able to cast the spell and make something happen. And if you prevent them from speaking. They. They can't do the spell. And it's just. It's so deeply embedded. You know, you know, that the creation story is that, you know. The spoken word brought things into being. You know, we don't even realize how. Deeply embedded that is. And it's. It's so deeply connected to this idea of success that I think Doug was talking about, which is. Making something happen that didn't. Making something exists that didn't exist before making something happen that didn't, you know, there's an intent. Or, and, and you say something and then. Suddenly you have a peanut butter sandwich because you said, Hey, I'd like a peanut butter sandwich. You've actually. Verbalized it and then it became real and it didn't exist before you. You said it. And I think that that's a really important. Part of agency that we've lost. Or that we've, we've forgotten about sometimes is that. Your word, well, and. I'll wrap this up with. The last several months of. Large language models and chat GPT and all of that. And that's where I haven't heard anyone talking about the idea that. Your words are your words. And there, there's a divinity in that. And there's just, there's a, there's a uniqueness and there's a quality about that. That's. Yes, I can use it to summarize for me. Yes, I can use it to create words for me, but you're missing the point. The point is that. Your words. Are your power, are your creative power, are your. Perspective. And I've specifically written a little section in my book that I'm writing. It says, I will not use any of those models to create this. Because I want this to be my words. Not for any other reason. Right wrong or otherwise, but. So I think that's an important part of. The angle of success that I believe Doug was. Referring to. I just want to thank Scott for that share that was so profound and insightful and worthy of going back and just looking at it from all angles. Something I will definitely write about. Thank you. Thank you, Scott. Dr. Grossman. Hello there. I was thinking about. I hadn't known exactly what you were talking about, you know, the, the theme of the meeting was. And. Thinking about. What success means. And almost stopping and tripping there before I got the, to the, to me, to us. And. And for understandable reasons, the word success or. Popped into my head. And I went, I went grabbing for, you know. Origins and etymology of the word success and. And. Somebody succeeding somebody else or. Groups of people succeeding other groups of people. And. It. You know, thinking at first that success to me means. You know, being able to. I mean. I long ago, you know, gave up the idea that I was going to hit the jackpot. And. The idea of doing something that. Is. That brings success to the rest of the world and. Manages to sustain me. And. Which produces. Success or condition. That. Succeeds me. That is, that is good and successful for everyone. So it's a little. Existential there, but. That's what success is meaning to me today. Love that. Yeah, thank you. God, I think you still have your hand up from earlier unless you want to jump back in. So I recently came across this guy. I think his name is Robert Henry. He's a professor of evolutionary biology at Harvard. And he wrote a book. One of them is on how weird people, you know, came about Western industrialized. Educated rich democratic. Very fascinating interview with him. And I was looking at his personal website and he said, one of my guiding questions is, how did humans go from being an unremarkable. Primate, you know, in the recent history to become in the most successful species on the globe. It really made me wonder what his, his definition of success is because while we may have been successful in solving a lot of problems, we've also been incredibly successful as like creating a lot of problems to the level we're about to self-afflict extinction on us. So maybe there's a larger conversation about. Besides, what does individual success look like to us? What does success as a species look like? And as far as I can tell. That goes back to Bucky for designing the human presence on earth to be beneficial for all beings because at the current way we're going, we're not going to be around for very much longer. So just to put a different frame on success there, you know, how do we as individual actors who often feel that we don't have a whole lot of agency because systems are so large and remote. How can we find the leverage points to make those changes and Doug Carmichael is, you know, constantly putting out every day, you know, we need to talk about climate change, we need to talk about garden world, we need to talk about strategies of how we're going to, how we're going to be successful. So we've been successful at this point, but our success is not assured unless we take a moment or a decade or a century, really reevaluate what human success looks like on this planet. Just thought I'd throw that in there. Thanks, Ken. You took me to a really interesting set of thoughts and also in combination with Scott about language. And that is the manipulations of our measures of success, which are really obvious. You know, the ownership society is a George W. Bush meme that was all about getting everybody to go own a house, buy a house and drive, you know, drive traffic that way. The American dream predates that. And the American dream is rugged individualism. Everybody owns a house with a Cocker Spaniel and a station wagon and a white picket fence and a whole bunch of other things that come along with the American dream. A piece of it sort of became everybody goes to college, which is not an assumption in other parts of the world. And it's not because they don't have enough colleges. It's because they have other reasonable paths to success in a livelihood or finding your way to your calling or whatever else it might be. So, and I, and you've heard, some of you have heard me talk before about how I think that we're in a titanic battle over the narratives in our heads and that that is my version, my amateur theory of history. That that history is the story of competing factions fighting over the narratives of kind of success and failure. I'll point out also that religions seem to use the afterlife as a form of success. And goal orientation, like you want to behave well because otherwise you won't end up in paradise. You'll end up in purgatory or whatever else that might be. So these are all constructs. These are all built up things. And there's a bunch of groups at some point I was sort of collecting them up in my brain, of course, groups called Rethinking the American Dream or some variant thereof. Because the American dream as sold and bought by Americans was toxic, was not helping us. A piece of the American dream seems to be that there's limitless resources because we have this wide expensive country where you can go forever and that nobody else existed here before Europeans showed up and now I'm verging into sort of white nationalist versions of the American dream. But language is essential. And how we reframe or address what we think and what our goals matters enormously. Hi, this is Jesse. Just talking about language and I was on a call with someone in the OGM group the other day and she and I were going back and forth and I just realized like three times in the conversation, did I say, wow, that word actually means this to me. And after the third time I go, oh, I realize I'm actually sounding like I'm maybe making you wrong by just saying what it means to me, but I want you to know my intention is to know how I live that word out and how I perceive it. And it allowed for us to have deeper listening for each other. She's like, no, no, don't worry about this is actually really good. But there is two different ways of receiving the response of saying this is how I see it. And I mean, she received it just fine. But to have to hold that. That space in a safe way to people are willing to do that and we did and it was beautiful. But the word was, I think one of the three was the use of better or best. And that actually infers not good enough. And we use it a lot. And I have lots of words that I almost wanted to create a dictionary of the power of words, but I just came across one actually in the library the other day and Barnes and Noble, there is the power of language in it. And it actually did do what I wanted to do. So I was like, yes, someone figured it out. They published what I was wanting to do. Love when I see that. You might write the optionary. And I love what you're describing about clarifying what things mean to us. I think that's one of the paths toward sorting things out and bridging the cultural divide and what have you is just going back and explaining what we mean. One of the virtues of nonviolent communication, a really great process with a terrible name is that the process involves the two parties, the two often aggrieved parties, and the other party is paraphrasing what the other one says without agreeing to them. So Ken would say what he felt and it's my role, it's my job then to repeat back to Ken. In other words, what he said to the point where he thinks I understood what he said, but I'm not agreeing with his premises because obviously he's agreed with me. But the mere act of putting in your head and coming back with what you think the other person said and getting that corrected, I think that's one of the things that we need to do is to get somebody out and often finds a nice path into the middle. So I think it's an admirable process. Go ahead, Scott. What I've found over the years is that I love those settings that Jesse had described or was someone who's actually engaged with you in a conversation and a dialogue of understanding and curiosity and empathy that I like to understand. And a lot of times I find when I raise questions like that or I say a distinction about something and then I ask what's your distinction on this? What's your definition? The response tells me that they hadn't really thought about it. And that's troublesome and it feels like an attack because I'm saying, well, without saying these words that you haven't really thought about that, have you? And so what you were saying was that this equals that but you hadn't really thought about what either one of those things mean to you. And so it's, I love those conversations and they happen, but I can see why they don't a lot because people haven't done even the next level of thinking to say what do I really mean by better? And I just use the word better. Okay, but what do I really mean? And not a lot of people want to think about what they actually mean with those all powerful words, those magic spells that they're casting every day with their language. Thanks, Scott. Scott, I've been loving your riffs this morning on language and magic. And it's a territory I've been hanging out in a lot. I'm running this experiment on myself. So when somebody says something, I habitually am listening for, what do I know about that? What does that mean to me? Do I agree or disagree? Are you right? Are you wrong? You know, that's sort of already there in my list. I'm saying I, but I think this is very general for a lot of us. I'm listening into a context that I'm already carrying. And I'm forming judgments of like, yes, that's right. No, that's wrong. Yes, I agree. No, I don't. You're an asshole, you're a friend. And the practice is a more open and receptive listening. And not making the immediate judgment, but responding with something like curiosity. Oh, that's interesting. Why would you say that? Or why did you say that or what brings you to say that? Or I can see why you may say that. Let's talk more about that. And you said as an opportunity, not for a judgment, but for an invitation into a conversation and relationship. And it's not easy because the, the story used the word thrownness before the, the thrownness that we come into it, what we are thrown into the way we just sort of show up in conversations is so deep and so habitual. But the experiment's really interesting and feels like it opens up possibilities of, possibilities of something that feels important. To find possibilities of connection rather than division. Scott, sorry. I'm going to accept that experiment and challenge. And I have a way I'm going to do it. That's very short and succinct. Because I think you're right. I think I come to those situations preloaded. All of us. Exactly. Not all of us. Not all of us. All is the next way. All is the next way. Thank you. So what I'm going to try to do Gil in, in honor of what you're doing here is I'm going to use my favorite. That's interesting. Tell me more. But I'm going to use it every time. I'm not going to try to think about what I should be asking. Or how should I frame this question or anything? I'm going to use the same phrase. Every time. Because I know that it's not. It's not me. It's, it's saying it's a welcoming of. What you're saying is interesting. Tell me more. I'm, and that shuts me up from saying anything that, that I have preloaded. So I'm going to try that as my like. Defaults instead. Cool. Let us know. Mr. Homer, I have a small suspicion. You might have been thinking about poems that relate to. I don't know. We've had a couple of suggestions in the chat during the call, including one by Emily Dickinson and one that Stuart had written. But if you were to just suddenly arise with such a thing, I think it would be a lovely way to wrap this call. I think I have one in there too, Jerry. Yeah. We see author on that Stacy. I sent it another call. I think it should be in your files from. From Gil has anything. From a long time ago. Cool. Gil, you'll pull that right up. I'm sure. I'll pull it up from the chat. It's not from my files. I pulled it up on the chat. There's no. Listed. There's not the list. But is your hand still up for you done, Gil? I'm done. Sorry. No worries. So I was listening into this call on it. And there is a poem. I don't think I've I've shared it before, but I'll share it again. It's called the goose by Muriel Spark. Hmm. When I know why I'm alive today, I will tell you early on during the food shortage, some of us are miraculous, miraculously presented each with a goose that laid a golden egg. Myself, I killed the cat green thing and ate it. Alas, many of the other recipients died of gold dust poisoning. A little different view on success. I don't know why I'm alive today. I will tell you early on during the food shortage, some of us were miraculously presented each with a goose that laid a golden egg. Myself, I killed the cat green thing and I ate it. Alas, many of the other recipients died of gold dust poisoning. Little different view on success. I'm going to go. Great to see you all have a wonderful week. Thanks, Ken. And thank you. In the story of the, in the story of the golden calf in the Bible, not only did the Israelites build this golden idol and dance around it instead of dealing with the reality, but as punishment or as maybe as treatment, Moses ground the thing into powder and put the powder into water and made them all drink it. He said it one more time. It went too fast for me. Sure. The powder into water. Moses ground up the golden calf into powder and put the powder into water and made the rebels drink it. Thank you. Speaking of gold dust poisoning. Thank you. Speaking of gold dust poisoning. Kind of as a purgative, maybe, I don't know. Just kidding. No, no, no, no, I got about, I got about 3000 years of commentary that you could read about just that question. Exactly. Exactly. Or sit quietly. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you, everybody. Thank you all for a delightful call. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for reminding me about the topic that we turned over. Last call and. I have something to say. Please. If anybody wants to come on Monday to the Marley call, there's a homework assignment. That would be to listen to Jerry's brain drops that he just put out. The one about you said something like, does your, does your BS meter. Go off something like that. If you could put that in the chat, I'm going to open up the Marley call. With that. If that's, yeah, that's what I'm doing. So I'm not sure I have a brain drop about. So when somebody says, trust me, right? Okay. But can you put the one that I need that I need for my Marley call and then you could do your own thing. But that one I need. Or I don't have to use it. I could just paraphrase it. Okay. So I think, so brain drops are what I'm calling very, my YouTube shorts and so forth. I don't know that I have a brain drop done about this. It's my question. Whatever you just put up because I, that's what I just listened to. I don't know what I didn't pay attention to what you were calling it. Okay. Just have notes on it somewhere. So what I put in the chat. I don't see anything in the chat. Yeah, I don't either. So you mean what I mentioned. No, I mean the recording you made. I saw. I saw a recording. It was a little short that you made. And it said. You guys figure it out and let us know. All right. Well, if you want to get it into. Bye. We'll sort it out. Thanks everybody. Bye. Bye.