Gumption

The Paradox of Choice: Decisions, Happiness and Appreciation

In addition to seeding my last post - on Dark Nights of the Soul - by sending me a link to an evocative image, Yogi also sent me a link to a 20-minute video of Barry Schwartz giving a presentation on The Paradox of Choice a few years ago at a TED conference.

The presentation is derived from Barry's book, The Paradox of Choice: Why Less is More, about which he says (during the video presentation), "I wrote a whole book to try to explain this [paradox] to myself" ... reminding me of why I blog ... or why David Whyte writes poetry ("Poetry is the art of hearing yourself say things you didn't know you knew" - (well, at least I think these are all related)).

Barry offers an engaging theory on why increasing choices often makes people miserable:

1. Regret and anticipated regret
2. Opportunity costs
3. Escalation of expectations
4. Self-blame

He is not railing against choice(s), but instead arguing that the "official dogma" - having more choices leads to more freedom and [thus] greater welfare - is wrong, that we pass a point of diminishing returns after which welfare - or happiness - decreases as the range of choices increase. As he says "some choice is better than no choice, but more choice is not necessarily better than some choice". While I generally and enthusiastically agree with many of his points, I think we differ on where the points of diminishing returns start, whether or how to set boundaries near those points, and whether there are other ways of approaching choice that may affect these points.

Barry draws some of of his examples of overwhelming choices from his supermarket, which stocks 250 varieties of cookies, 75 iced teas, 230 soups, 175 salad dressings, 275 cereals and 40 toothpastes (several years ago, a Washington Post article on Toothpaste Proliferation Syndrome reported finding 179 varieties of toothpaste in a virtual stroll down the aisle at Drugstore.com).

One of the side effects of so much choice is that it increases the likelihood that we'll make a "wrong" choice, and the corresponding likelihood that we'll regret our choice ... and the likelihood that we'll anticipate regretting our choice:

Even if we manage to overcome the paralysis and make a choice, we end up less satisfied with the result of the choice than if we had fewer options to choose from.
...
With a lot of different salad dressings to choose from, if you buy one and it's not perfect ... it's easy to imagine you could have made a different choice that would have been better. And what happens is this imagined alternative induces you to regret the decision you made, and this regret subtracts from the satisfaction you get out of the decision you made even if it was a good decision. The more options there are, the easier it is to regret anything at all about the option that you chose.

Further on in the presentation, Barry distinguishes between time spent making decisions vs. acting on those decisions, which evoked an image of spending more time computing in the nodes vs. traversing the branches of a decision tree. But upon further reflection, this representation of activity led me to start wondering what proportion of of the time we are acting on previous, or higher level, decisions, is actually spent making lower level decisions, many of which we may not even be conscious of ... whether, in effect, it's decisions all the way down.

Shifting from decision theory to political theory, representative democracy strikes me as one model for modulating choice, wherein we elect representatives who we then hope will make good decisions regarding a large number of options across a wide range of topics on our behalf (behalves?). I rarely hear people complain about the overwhelming range of choices in political candidates (in this country), although I often hear people complain about decisions made by our "elected" politicians ... especially during a U.S. presidential election year. 

I'm reminded of much I've heard and read about "tastemakers" and "trendsetters", and I imagine we often tend to gravitate toward official and unofficial "authorities" to reduce our anxiety over the array of choices. One of the benefits of this tendency is that it can simplify our lives. However, the shadow side of this tendency reflects Don Miguel Ruiz' notion of "domestication" (described in the introduction of his book, The Four Agreements), in which we learn to defer to authorities as children, and eventually learn to constrain ourselves based on what we think the authorities would want us to think, feel and do. [The Four Agreements are about unlearning this domestication, or at least consciously making agreements about what rules - and rulers - we are willing to follow. I've written about two of them before - don't take anything personally and always do your best - and will surely find a pretext to blog about the other two - be impeccable with your word and don't make assumptions.]

This delegation of power to authorities is what bothered me most about the presentation. Barry complains that doctors no longer tell us what to do, but instead list alternatives we might consider. Personally, I like doctors presenting alternatives with relative benefits and risks vs. telling us (me) what to do; the latter, more "traditional" (and "authoritative") approach strikes me as disempowering, and I would greatly prefer to deal directly with the misery entailed by being offered a multitude of health care alternatives than to suffer the degradation of condescending "doctor's orders".

The idea of delegation is closely related to surrogation, which reminds me of Dan Gilbert's ideas on how we make decisions (poorly) and how we ought to make decisions (using a surrogate). As I'd noted in an earlier post on Dan's book, Stumbling on Happiness, he argues that

rather than relying solely on our selves (and our fallible memories) to imagine how happy we will feel in some future state, we should capitalize on the experience of others by inquiring about the happiness of those who are already in the future state we are considering ... the problem [then] is figuring out which others we ought to consult in estimating our future ... I want to know what people like me like.

[I'll also note, here, that I recently discovered a TED video of Dan's presentation on Stumbling on Happiness].

Given my renewed research into recommender systems, and some recent ruminations about re-rethinking recommendation engines, I see how such systems can also play a key role in effectively addressing the increasing array of choices we face in our lives ... and in helping me find people like me ... and what those people like.

What people [like me] like reminds of David Whyte's perspective on why we are liked (or loved), expressed through his poem, "This Time":

Those stars told him
they loved him only
for what he loved himself.
They did not love him
for who he was.

So, people like me [might] like me for what I like.

Toward the end of his presentation, Barry wryly comments "the secret to happiness is low expectations". I've been a student of happiness for some time, and am intrigued with many dimensions of the art, science and business of happiness. And so, I again turn from the science to art - from psychology to poetry - and invoke Oriah Mountain Dreamer's perspective on the secret to happiness ... which not only offers a contrast to Barry's, but also seems to conflict with the sentiment expressed by David Whyte (which is particularly incongruent, for me, as one of his workshops had inspired her earlier prose poem, The Invitation, and I find a great deal of congruence between that poem and his poem, Self Portrait). Oriah expresses a view which has more to do with greater appreciation - and less to do with lower expectations - and seems to admit the possibility that we might well love ourselves for who we are (not just for what we love) in the Prelude to her book, The Dance:

What if your contribution to the world and the fulfillment of your own happiness is not dependent upon discovering a better method of prayer or technique of meditation, not dependent upon reading the right book or attending the right seminar, but upon really seeing and deeply appreciating yourself and the world as they are right now?

So maybe what we really need in the next generation of recommender systems - as a way out of the paradox of choice - is new mechanisms to help us better appreciate ourselves, and the people, places and things around us ... and perhaps new ways for expressing our love for people, places and things.

In any case, I think a healthy dose of Susan Jeffers' "no-lose decision model" (from her book, Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway ) offers a remedy for avoiding the misery and regret that Barry talks about. I've mentioned it before, but I'll include it yet again, as I think it is relevant (and helpful):

Before you make a decision:

1. Focus immediately on the no-lose model (whichever path you choose will provide learning opportunities … even if it’s learning what you don’t like)
2. Do your homework (talk to as many people as will listen … both to help clarify your own intention and to get alternative perspectives)
3. Establish your priorities (which pathway is more in line with your overall goals in life – at the present time)
4. Trust your impulses (your body gives you good clues about which way to go)
5. Lighten up (it really doesn’t matter – it’s all part of a lifelong learning process)

After making a decision:

1. Throw away the picture (if you focus on what you expected, you may miss the unexpected opportunities that arise along the new path you’ve chosen)
2. Accept total responsibility for your decision (don’t give away your power)
3. Don’t protect, correct (commit yourself to any decision you make and give it all you got … but if it doesn’t work out, change it!)

Although we may not want to apply the full range of this model in every choice we make - talking to as many people as will listen about which toothpaste to buy seems a bit extreme - but lightening up and letting go seem like good practices to apply to all our choices.

Dark Nights of the Soul

Maureen McHugh, a science fiction writer (who also enjoys "not science fiction" books), has written about the challenges of writing novels (and battling cancer) on her blog, No Feeling of Falling. She augmented her words - which unfold with exquisite openness and vulnerability - with a graphical depiction of the soul work involved in rising to meet these challenges, which is inevitably preceded by a descent of some kind. The image, appropriately entitled Dark Night of the Soul, is shown above; it first appeared in a post entitled Episode 1: Begin Anew, which offers a wonderful perspective from which to view new challenges.

Yogi sent me a link to this image, after a recent guest presentation I gave at a UW Tacoma course on Social Networks, taught by Ankur Teredesai [the presentation was on how proactive displays bridge gaps between online social networks and shared physical spaces]. Yogi had encountered the image in yet another course, on Interaction Design, an area which also offers a set of challenges, though the image and the ideas it represents were more related to our broader conversation after the class about work, soul, passion and happiness. I wanted to continue that rumination here, because it brought to mind (and heart) a few strands of inspiration I've encountered elsewhere.

David Whyte, in his book, The Heart Aroused: Poetry and the Preservation of Soul in Corporate America, invokes the epic poem of Beowulf - in which the hero descends into a deep well to battle a monster, Grendel, who has been attacking King Hrothgar's men, and then descends again to battle Grendel's mother - to illustrate some of his insights and experiences into creativity in the workplace. Whyte notes that:

[H]uman existence is half light and half dark, and our creative possibilities seem strangely linked to that part of us we keep in the dark.

and goes on to share the steps he sees in the story - and throughout work (and life) - that are required for unleashing our creativity:

• dropping beneath the surface
• disclosure and vulnerability
• disappearance and return

Whyte draws an analogy between Beowulf's battle with Grendel mother and each of our individual battles with the mother of all vulnerabilities: "the deep physical shame that we are not enough, will never be enough, and can never measure up".

He finishes the chapter with a quote from The Man Watching, by the German poet, Rainer Maria Rilke:

Winning does not tempt that man.
This is how he grows: by being defeated, decisively,
by constantly greater beings.

Or, perhaps, one might say, by facing, repeatedly, darker and darker nights of the soul.

In an earlier post on an unfolding series of peak and pit experiences, I'd written about how inspired I was by Dan Oestreich's insights into and applications of Otto Scharmer's ideas about "Theory U". I want to repeat - again - what Dan had to say:

We all want to know where the point of transformation lies. I would say it is in “no space,” the place we come to after exhausting everything we know…and everything we are, a point of pure meditation. The current theory base, exemplified by Oscar Scharmer’s “Theory U”, suggests exactly this process of emptying ourselves of everything known so that we can listen to a best future Self, a source of deep intuitive wisdom... Scharmer describes the bottom of the U as where we touch a larger field that goes beyond our present awareness, a place of new insight and new consciousness that enables us to solve the problems we have been stuck by using our current, more limited awareness.

I also want to include a larger version of the image Scharmer uses to illustrate Theory U, as it closely relates to the image of the Dark Night of the Soul I started with at the beginning of this post:

I still have not read Theory U (yet), but revisiting this image reveals another dimension of connection (for me (and my work)), with respect to the inspiring ideas of co-sensing, co-presencing and co-creating - not to mention open mind, open heart and open will - so I've ordered a copy of the book.

Meanwhile, based on what Dan has written (and what I've experienced), I suspect the process of descending and rising from the depths of our selves and our work is an ongoing educational journey ... leading through a series of dark nights of the soul(s) ... and, hopefully, some bright days, as well.

Oh, I almost forgot to add that the image also reminds me of stories I've heard about "thesis hill", a visual representation that Roger Schank (my academic "grandfather") employs - or employed - in his meetings with graduate students. Thesis hill, as I understand it, was depicted using an inverse geometric representation - climbing a hill vs. descending into darkness - but in my experience, and in the experience of many people I know (including many of Roger's former students - my "uncles" and "aunts"), working on a Ph.D. thesis often requires persevering through many dark nights of the soul ... and Rilke's quote about repeated, decisive defeats by greater (or, at least, more powerful) beings is one of the best, short verbal characterizations of graduate school - and especially, a thesis defense - that I've encountered ... rivaling the visual characterization of the Dark Night of the Soul. And, I suppose, writing a science fiction novel has many characteristics in common with writing a Ph.D. [scientific] thesis, just with varying intentions - and interpretations - with respect to the relative use of fact and fiction.

[Update, 2008-04-01: I just stumbled upon this relevant quote - from one of my heroes, who certainly had keen insights into darkness and souls - on Aaditeshwar Seth's home page:

"Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand."

- George Orwell, 1946.]

Celebrating the Future Within ... Everyone?

Amy and I attended the Jubilee Women's Center's 10th Annual Benefit Breakfast on Wednesday, which had the inspiring title "Celebrating the Future Within" ... and a correspondingly inspiring program that included several women recounting their challenges, and now the Jubilee Women's Center helped them rise to meet those challenges. Our good friend, Mary, is on the Board of Directors for the organization, which is why we were there.

Jubilee is a transitional housing facility that offers homeless single women from ages 21 thru 60 a safe place in which to live and renew themselves. Women pay $250 / month for rent - the rest of which is subsidized through donations (such as those that are made during the annual breakfast) - and are offered a variety of training classes to help them become more self-reliant, both personally and professionally ... as Meeghan Black, of KING 5 TV, the MC for the event noted: these training classes sound like something everyone could use.

Deacon Steve Wodzanowski from St. Joseph Parish led the invocation, which was - synchronistically (for me) - based largely on a poem, The Journey, from Mary Oliver, a portion of which I'd referenced in my last post (on Blessed Unrest (which was based largely on Paul Hawken's book of the same name)), though he recited the full version, which I'm going to include here:

The Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice -
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles. "Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice,
which you slowly recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do -
determined to save
the only life you could save.

This, in turn, reminded of some of my earlier ruminations on Ralph Waldo Emerson's writings, which brought into focus my conflicting views on self-reliance vs. interdependence, inherence, adherence and coherence - essentially, the self vs. society. There does seem to be a conflict, or at least tension, between teaching self-reliance (independence) and yet preparing women to re-enter society (which is, by definition, highly interdependent). One of Emerson's observations closely aligns with Mary Oliver's poem (and the overall theme of the event):

Trust thyself: every heart every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events.

Getting back to the event, it turns out that the average age of the women residents of Jubilee is 45. That fact, together with the unexpected events along their unanticipated path toward homelessness - for which I kept thinking "there, but for the grace of God the flying spaghetti monster, go I" (leaving aside, for the moment, the gender issue) - got me thinking about Dante, and his observation at the outset of The Divine Comedy:

In the middle of the road of my life I awoke in the dark wood where the true way was wholly lost.

Susan Fox, the Executive Director of the organization, noted the stigma often associated with women who are victims of domestic violence and/or homelessness, and stressed the importance of the positivism that pervades all aspects of Jubilee's programs. She encouraged us - and everyone - to look for (and celebrate?) the essential goodness within each of these women, a perspective I try to adhere to ... and, yet (as with so many things), often feel conflicted about.

I suspect that Susan would extend this suspension of negative judgment and appreciation of essential goodness to all women, not just those whose paths happen to lead to / through Jubilee. Returning to the gender thread I suspended earlier, this got me to thinking about whether we draw the line at women, or whether we ought to suspend negative judgments and appreciate the goodness in all people, men and women alike.

Pushing further along this edge, I wondered whether / how we can offer the same graciousness to the men who perpetrated violence on the women residents of Jubilee (not that I mean tot imply that all residents there are victims of domestic violence). Can we - ought we to - celebrate the future within every person (not just every woman)?

I find this to be an immensely challenging proposition. Philosophically, I cannot justify the drawing of lines of demarcation - this person is essentially good, that person is essentially evil. However, in practice, I do this all the time (I've noted several times before my personal challenges with seeing the essential goodness in George W. Bush, who, in my judgment, is one of the biggest perpetrators of violence - scaling back social programs, reducing protections for our environment, supporting capital punishment, war and [other forms of] torture - on the face of the planet). Who knows, maybe more obvious expressions of goodness lie in his future ...

As usual, I don't have any good answers ... just good questions ... or, at least, questions about goodness.

Anything or anyone that does not bring you alive is too small for you

David Whyte's poetry and narratives in the 6-CD collection, Clear Mind, Wild Heart: Finding Courage and Clarity through Poetry, continue to inspire me. The title of this post is taken from his poem, Sweet Darkness, in which he writes about darkness, tiredness, belonging, freedom and coming alive.  This past week, I recognized that I have come alive [again] in my work -- a resurgence, of sorts -- and I was reminded of an earlier period in my research career where I felt very much alive ... closely followed by a period of darkness, tiredness and confinement. Before reflecting a bit more on personal (and professional) history, I wanted to include the poem, Sweet Darkness, (found here) for reference.

Sweet Darkness

 

When your eyes are tired
the world is tired also.

 

When your vision has gone
no part of the world can find you.

 

Time to go into the dark
where the night has eyes
to recognize its own.

 

There you can be sure
you are not beyond love.

 

The dark will be your womb
tonight.

 

The night will give you a horizon
further than you can see.

 

You must learn one thing:
the world was made to be free in.

 

Give up all the other worlds
except the one to which you belong.

 

Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
confinement of your aloneness
to learn

 

anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive

 

is too small for you.

 

~ David Whyte ~

In the accompanying narrative that Whyte offers to provide some context for the poem, he invokes the spirit of Dante ("in the middle of the road of my life, I awoke in a dark wood where the way was wholly lost"), and encourages us middle-of-the-roaders to relinquish our clinging to a "climate-controlled existence" and embrace an investigative vulnerability as we cultivate a relationship with the unknown,  with whatever lies over the horizon.

Earlier (in Disc 1, "Our home is so close to us"), Whyte observes that

We're meant to hazard ourselves, to hurt ourselves, to be disappointed, to be on an edge in which you will discover what is you and what is not you.

and later

We naturally gravitate to the corners of creation in which we belong and in which we're supported in doing our work.

Whyte describes poetry as "the art of living at a frontier in life", offering a place of renewal, rediscovery and reimagination. Poetry is as much listening as it is speaking, creating a context in which "you can hear yourself say things you didn't know that you knew." He shares a profound example of this in Sweet Darkness, when he wrote "You must learn one thing..." and wondered, with keen anticipation, just what that one thing would turn out to be.

Further on, Whyte talks about the true nature of humliliation ("to be returned to the ground of your being") and the tendency for many of us to enage in work that we have no affection for, doing it out of our desire for belonging, i.e., doing what we think we should be doing in order to be liked, and often becoming exhausted in the process (reminding me of a recent NPR Talk of the Nation segment on Understanding Burnout, and the high cost of employee disengagement I've written about earlier). A wise Benedictine monk, Brother David, a friend of Whyte's, then shares his insight that

the antidote to exhaustion is wholeheartedness

Whyte concludes the session with the observation that we're all creatures of belonging, and that by articulating all the ways we feel lonely, we're already on the way home ... reflecting insights shared by others regarding the most personal is the most general, and my own sense that by openly sharing our inner secrets, we are better able to connect with others.

And so, inspired by all of this, I decided to start writing, albeit more prosaically than poetically, wondering what, exactly I would say ... how I would say it ... and how deep I would be willing to delve into some of the shadows of my past. I'll start with some recent events, and revisit a few related events in the more distant past -- and the feelings and judgments they evoke[d] in me.

This past week was a particularly wholehearted nd exhilarating week for me, with a number of engaging meetings with interesting people, and culminating in a personal peak around an internal presentation (at Nokia Research Center, Palo Alto) I gave on the past, present and future of proactive displays. In preparing and presenting the slides, I felt more alive than I have in quite some time ... and was offered an opportunity to reflect back upon a period where I experienced a spiritually deadening blockage in my work.

At the outset of the last episode of my assumption of the role of a researcher, I felt very much alive. I had joined a new research lab, I was co-chairing CSCW 2002 (with my dear friend, Elizabeth Churchill), and I would soon be chairing UbiComp 2003 (with lots of help from another good friend, Dave McDonald). In between, I was co-creating a research agenda that would align my passion for using technology to help people relate to one another with my role as conference chair. With the help of Dave, three fabulous interns (David Nguyen, Al "Mamun" Rashid and Suzi Soroczak), and a host of other supporting actors, we designed, developed, deployed and evaluated a suite of three proactive display applications at UbiComp 2003. Our primary goal was to foster a greater sense of community among attendees by sensing people near large displays and showing content relating to those people on the displays. While we encountered challenges of various kinds before, during and after the event, and everything did not go as planned (as anyone who has deployed large-scale sociotechnical interventions "in the wild" can probably relate to), I felt that the project was largely successful, and on the Wednesday night at the end of the conference, I felt like I was at the pinnacle of my career ... and I suppose the next few days, weeks and months only reinforced the perception that that night did, in fact, represent a peak.

I took a much-needed vacation the following Thursday, and when I came in on Friday, I had a meeting with the [now former] lab director and [now former] co-director in which I was told, in effect, that I -- or at least, my work -- wasn't good enough. My approach to research was judged unacceptable, and the work was not well-enough aligned with one of two recently annointed projects, and the goal of the director was to subsume all the research in the lab under these two projects. The proactive display project was cancelled, effectively immediately (to this day, there is no reference to the work on the web site of the lab), and I was told to work on another application, involving the creation and use of place tokens in blogs, that had been largely defined by a [then former] colleague who had left the lab, and that would align with one of the two approved projects. Unfortunately, I didn't believe in the value of the application --  or the project -- and the more I researched it, the less compelling I found the value proposition(s).

The six months following my "success" at UbiComp 2003 was the most soul squelching period of my professional life, as I continued to work on my assigned project, and I finally decided that what I really wanted to do was realign with my heartfelt mission and renew my pursuit of the proactive display agenda, of which I felt we'd only scratched the surface. Although the director would not agree to support the work, I was allocated a grace period in which to explore whether / where / how that work might be supported elsewhere in the firm, or outside of the firm. Unfortunately, while many people were supportive of the idea, no one was willing to allocate "head count" to support me in pursuing the idea. I decided the only way to realize my dream was to create a firm, Interrelativity, Inc., to support its development (with key development support provided by Khai Truong at the outset).

As I've written before, I felt very much alive in my entrepreneurial period, which was filled with fabulous rewards in nearly every dimension ... except the financial one. So, when I joined Nokia last fall, I hoped to achieve a more comprehensive spectrum of fulfillment (pursuing work aligned with my mission ... while getting paid). After six months of devoting much of my time and effort to playing a supporting role with respect to what I would characterize as cultural and organizational development, the presentation last week marked the first time I'd publicly articulated the research (and/or development) agenda to which I aspire, with the help -- and within the framework -- of the Context, Content and Community team.

Listening to Whyte's second CD ("In the middle of the road of our lives") on Friday evening -- for at least the fifth time (I've listened to all the CDs many times) -- it dawned on me that the work I am doing and the people I am working with are helping to bring me alive [again], and that my idealistic initial intuition about belonging -- in a firm whose mantra is "connecting people", a lab dedicated to inventing the future mobile Internet experience, and a team whose mission is to create large scale experimental systems for large scale social change -- increasingly appears to be grounded in reality. In writing this, I am aware that I had similar perceptions and judgments at this stage in my last research position, but I will continue to hope there are some key differences in me (now) and / or the new[er] lab that will enable me to enjoy some time in the light ... and to help me / us bring light to others.

Poetry, Courage and Change

In my last post, I wrote about Susan Jeffer's No-Lose Model for making decisions, the last step of which -- after the decision is made -- is

Don’t protect, correct (commit yourself to any decision you make and give it all you've got … but if it doesn’t work out, change it!)

On the flight down to SFO early this morning, I was listening to Disc 2 of David Whyte's Clear Mind, Wild Heart, in which he provides an example of this willingness to make course corrections in his own life.  He was working with a non-profit, and was finding himself feeling increasingly tired ... which is hardly surprising, given his observation that non-profits generally exist to change the world, so there's always more to do.  A friend helped him discover the following insight:

the antidote to exhaustion is wholeheartedness

He could have changed jobs, but instead he changed his job description until it more naturally suited who he really was.

Two other quotes from David Whyte that resonated with me today were

courage is the ability to cultivate a relationship with the unknown

and

anything and anyone that does not bring you alive is too small for you

I finished my first day of work at Nokia Research Center, Palo Alto, today.  I've been up since 3am, and although I feel a bit tired, I don't feel exhausted.  Some new changes were announced today, and more are likely to follow, but it's all new to me, and so much is still unknown.  But in that uncertainty lies a great opportunity to bring big things to life.  And everything I learned today reinforced the initial impression I had that the natural expression of my passions, skills and experiences will help the lab -- and me -- unfold together in positive ways.

Thinking about David Whyte in this context, I believe what the lab is looking for, and what I intend to co-create, is a clear-minded, wild-hearted research agenda.