Care for your gift
Hello everyone,
I hope you are all well.
It has been a long long long time since the last enzyme.
I intended this year to be working in Vietnamese, and boy did I miss English. So here I am, writing to you with much delight, getting reacquainted to a medium I’ve chosen to leave behind.
Vietnam has been undergoing a severe bout of lockdown. Fortunately, in Hanoi where I grew up and now am living in, I am still able to see the sunset.
Some joyful updates that I am heartened by and want to congratulate myself for these small wins:
The book is going to be out soon in the UK, and for US it's Jan 2022. I have yet to hold a hard copy, but the visual looks beautiful. And the writing? It reads quite well. I was surprised to find rather myself inspired by it.
I will do a bigger launch on that next year, so stay tuned :-)I'm starting a new venture in Vietnam, a playground for adults to continue developing themselves, being clearer, more effective, and joyful in our day to day. Our first big event would be an online Festival for Change (kinda like a Burning Man + Wisdom 2.0 conference at 1% the scale - humble beginning). If you know of anyone in Vietnam who's interested, please introduce us :-)
I'm joining The Deep Play Institute to put on some playful life-changing experiences there. It feels wonderful to find a place of belonging. The people are quirky, smart and very caring, with overlapping interests and complementary edges. It's not easy to find like-spirited people in this world, especially if your wide interests have led you to some really strange interdisciplinary rabbit holes.
I find our founder Aaron particularly inspiring for keep showing up and doing his thing for a long long time, what I call "holding up the WEIRD/GENIUS flag"
It’s amazing how the consistency of doing the work, putting yourself out there, sharing and refining our gifts - be that our knowing (knowledge), doing (skills) or being (qualities) - no matter how weird could bring in terms of the people we will meet.
It’s also the best way to take care of ourselves, which is the topic of today’s enzyme.
Care for your gift.
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This morning, I was a little bit tired of work, so I decided to do some "self-care" stuff, one of which is reading the words of wise people. This beautiful line from Brother David Steindl-Rast popped back
"The antidote to burnout is not necessarily rest. The antidote to burnout is wholeheartedness."
That line sent an electric shock up my spine. I ran straight to writing.
I don't need rest as much as I need to find the ways, the places and the people whom I so wholeheartedly want to give my gift to, who will cherish it like plants cherishing sunlight, like a desert traveler thirsting for drops of water. I thought I love to write, but boy, that’s only the supply side of the equation. What I really mean is that I love to write about what matters to the people who also care.
The happiest, most loving and dare I say impactful people are those who know their gift and find ways to give it away. Just as importantly, it's not only the artist creating for creation's sake, the maker making for his own delight. We also pay attention to the giving away, to give our gift precisely to those who can and do cherish that. It's the latter that has been eluding many creative people like myself, a thinker-writer (as opposed to a writer-writer) who is only slowly finding resonance with more people.
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This is more than just practical career advice or Ikigai stuff. It's about living a good life, about caring for our small isolated self by paying attention to how it already is a part of something beyond itself.
The psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi would call this flow. Many of us come to know from a personal angle with momentary moments of "losing a sense of time". The life hackers now even have a checklist for micro flow. Yet it is more existential than that. Over time, our very sense of self is touched. He writes in one of the most riveting passages I've read in a lesser-known book, "The Evolving Self".
"The knowledge that we are not alone, that we don't have to defend our isolated selves against the rest of the universe, results in an intoxicating feeling of relief.
We can act with joyful abandon, trying with the strength of all our fibers to reach the goals we have set for ourselves, yet ready to face failure with serenity. After all, why should our own goals take precedence in the enormous complexity of the universal mosaic? If they work out, so much the better.
But we cannot really lose as long as our ultimate goals are at one with those of the cosmos. It is not only while playing an exhilarating game of touch football, or singing a beautiful tune, or becoming lost in painting a canvas that we will experience flow; flow will become the normal experience of everyday life, permeating everything that we do."
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One aspect I like from the language of “gift” is that it highlights our interconnectedness. You don't find your gift alone, even though it's necessary to introspect and do all the self-inventory stuff. Most of the time, it's a good friend, a mentor, or a guide that helps you see your gift. I began coaching because a dear friend of mine said to me while we were breaking naan in The Mission in San Francisco in 2018, “Hey, every time we talk you are a like a coach to me. Why don't you do it formally?” You probably can tell a similar story.
You certainly don't it keep alone either. A gift has to be given away. Otherwise it stays rotten, like muddled water stuck in one place. You want to find the place, the people who are thirsty for it. This is where the "following your passion" mantra falls short. If your passion leads you to a sense of isolation, "I'm good on my own making my art", I doubt that it is yet the fullest expression of your gift.
Your gift matters to more than just you. It's also your place in the world, the community that will receive and also helps you hone the skill of gift-giving.
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So what, you ask?
Perhaps it's a question for you to keep at the back of your mind as you go about your day, get that cup of coffee, and practice those yoga postures.
"How am I giving my gift away?"
Whether that is your brain, brawn or beauty, your enthusiasm, curiosity, creativity, empathy for others, thoughtfulness or the ability to step back and add new perspectives etc.., find ways to use it and share it. That's how you best care for yourself.
I'm not saying that you shouldn't meditate, eat well, go for walks, breathe deeply, do yoga, read good stuff etc..
By all means, do those self-care things when appropriate.
AND
don't forget to get to know your gift, use it, work on it, give it away, share it to those who are delighted to receive it.
Otherwise, you risk missing the forest of deep wholehearted care for the trees of cute self-care practices.
An invitation to Playing with What We Most Love
One of the gifts that I am honing in is to bring people to Ahas, especially about their own lives and what they most love.
This is also a journey that I am putting on at the Deep Play Institute, starting early Oct.
It's particularly for those who have been thinking about changes, like jobs, places to live or even relationships. (The trendy phrase now is "I'm in transition")
It's also for those who are doing okay and want to explore a different way of being and doing that goes beyond productivity and achievement.
We'll ask beautiful and strange questions, play with our whole mind-heart-flesh thing and accompany each other in getting to know ourselves like it's our first date.
If you or anyone resonate, find out more at the link here. Play with What We Most Love
And you can also join us and celebrate at the Open House on Sunday 26th Sept from 730p-930p Est.
Feel free to write to me if you have any questions too.
Let's expand the circle of giving our gifts.
Till next time,
Khuyen
ps: do write back. I’d love to hear how you are doing. Maybe a gift you are discovering in yourself, and a question?