Who am I, and why am I here?

Practice curiosity, starting with the simplest of things. Feel the expansion in your imagination and your body.

From her earliest life, Jane Goodall likes to tell this story about how she was driven by curiosity. And in fact, one of her earliest memories, and one of the earliest memories of all the adults around her, is when she disappeared because she had hidden in the hen coop to understand how chickens lay eggs, because nobody had been able to explain it to her.

It’s also interesting, in other parts of her story, how she retained her core value of curiosity even in the face of what she abhorred and felt she needed to fight, even in herself, as much as in others.

Jane Goodall brings home so much that we’re actually learning — again, on our scientific frontiers — about the power of the muscle of curiosity. Where experiences and responses like fear and anxiety tighten us up and close us off and shut us down, curiosity literally expands us, physically and emotionally, and it expands what becomes possible.

How do I experience, even personify, time in my body and in my imagination?

A thought (and spirit) experiment: receive and settle in Joy Harjo’s trust that time and space are on the side of deep justice and human flourishing.

Consider, as Joy does, our children as the “rudder of hope” — and that insistence that all children are our children.

There are many invitations here. One of them is to get less literal, less Newtonian; which is to say, to more completely enter the reality of time and space, to claim a hope muscular enough to meet them as they are and to, as Joy said, fly a little in our perspective — to believe and to insist and to live as if time and space are on the side of deep justice and human flourishing, in which we all become more whole.

What am I grateful for in this moment?

Stop. Behold. Go.

The invitation here is to be grateful — not for everything, but in every moment. What does that take, and what does it change?

Brother David also has such interesting ways to talk about what “spirituality” really means. He points out that spirituality comes from “spiritus,” and that means “life, breath, aliveness.” Spirituality is aliveness on all levels. It starts with our bodily aliveness; also means aliveness to interrelationships, aliveness to mystery. Science, Brother David says, has discovered that when people are grateful, they come alive, and you can actually talk about that in terms of measurable outcomes of well-being. What a time to be alive.

In what granular way could I more vividly live as I would like to see a life?

As you move through your days, try on calling yourself a social creative, a social artist, even if only to yourself.

Few others teach about hope — and radiate it — like Jericho Brown, our final voice in this course. And there are so many invitations here. One of them is to deploy your imagination — to live as one would want to see a life.

Walk around with that. That is a thrilling idea, challenging in practice — like hope, worth throwing one’s life at.

And try on that language of being a culture worker — that we are each of us culture workers; that we are steeped in culture, touching it, and it is touching us at all times.

Take in the language that flows from that and from Jericho Brown — of thinking of yourself as a social creative, a social artist — even if only to yourself, quietly. See what that shifts as you walk through the world. These are such wonderful charges. They are a sending forth from Jericho, as we also step out of this course.

Where do I direct my curiosity and care? Where have I not been looking?

Remember: curiosity, listening, and presence — proximity that is spiritual as much as physical — is a first step before setting an action plan.

This Wisdom Practice is a wonderful way into the question that so many of us have been asking, so many of us across all of our divides and differences. Seeing the reckonings that are upon us, seeing the repair that we want to happen in our world — how to begin?

The language of hope as a “superpower” could be problematic; one thing we do with virtues and with virtuous people is to put them up on pedestals where what they’re describing and modeling feels inaccessible to the lowly rest of us. But there’s no pedestal here, if you know what Bryan Stevenson’s first counsel is when people ask him, “How do I live this way you live?” How do I develop this muscular hope that is also so pragmatic, and that shifts things in the world? His counsel is: “Get proximate.” Find a way to get proximate to the people in your neighborhoods, your communities, the places where you work, the places where you live — the people who are marginalized, who are excluded.

He’s talking about physical proximity, but what he’s also describing is this connection that is always there with deep ways of living and being, with virtues and moves of character — that what we do externally also involves inward preparation and settling. Getting proximate also means getting spiritually proximate. How do you do that? You get mentally and emotionally present to things that perhaps you haven’t noticed or gotten up close to before. You get curious, which is just this very quiet muscle, this quiet virtue that makes almost all of the other virtues more possible.

The invitation to practice here is to take Bryan Stevenson’s counsel to become proximate into your mind, into your body. Walk around with it. Walk around with it and see what it does inside you, and see what it moves you to see and to do in the world that you can see and touch. That’s the first place, the primary place, any of us are called to be present — for our presence to matter.

What shifts when I get curious about the difference between critical thinking, cynicism, and hope?

Notice in your day when “hope inspires the good to reveal itself.”

Maria Popova offers an invitation to practice that is akin to the practice of the previous session. It’s another move towards getting proximate: “What do I agree to attend to and notice?”

Another muscle suggested by Maria is to interrogate yourself when you have a cynical reaction, and wonder how you might be protecting yourself with that reaction. It is, after all, a reaction you may have been trained to have. Is there a different move you could make, even just flexing that muscle of curiosity that lives so close to the muscle of hope?

That Emily Dickinson line that comes to us through Anne Lamott is also such a gift here: “Hope inspires the good to reveal itself.” If you’re going through your days practicing hope, notice when that happens — when an orientation of hope inspires the good to reveal itself.

Is there a hope I’m holding onto that gets in the way of taking in the full reality of things?

Practice tonglen in the face of news or an experience you can hardly bear. Breathe in the pain, and breathe out healing.

“The hope that suffering will go away if I don’t look at it — that’s the wrong kind of hope.”

How is just being alive now calling to struggle that is an invitation to new life?

Pause amidst the overwhelm. When you’re in a challenging experience, ask what it is making available to you rather than how it is limiting you.

The invitation here, at a very elemental level, is to take in the magnitude — the peril and the promise — of being alive at this moment in time.

The invitation is to make a shift when we can — when we can get out from under a sense of overwhelm — to ask what the incredible fullness and gravity of now is making more available to us, rather than how it is limiting and uncomfortable.