Consider picking what you find as much as hunting what you need.
Your choice will double and your pains be halved.
I must be coming from an ancestry of gatherers; I have a born habit to keep looking around and finding things and an urge to understand what I found. The understanding part is the most important, as all people stumble on things constantly ... but ignore them because they do not care or see any value.
On my daily walk with my two dogs, I find coins lost, nuts fallen - in places where many other people passed, wild strawberries, small fruit in the bushes, butterflies and lizards, I glimpse the one swallow not supposed to make spring, the change of tide in the Zeitgeist. When I read or talk with people, an amazing number of things I meet falls in place with my current interest. Wherever I learn something new, I soon meet many other related to it. Heavens! How little we know!
The strange thing is that in my wanderings I do not see details, I do not analyse: I rather grasp the shape of the whole and observe differences and likeness standing out. The instinct of the gatherer is a curiosity for differences and impressions. I am alert for potential promise, beauty and usefulness in everything; or threat.
There is a difference in the strategy of the gatherer compared to the seeker. The seeker would go to the flea market - or the huge flea market that is the world around us - with a set vision of what he wants to find; he may discover that thing he was after or he may create or build that which he seeks. The gatherer is a modest innovator; he will not inspect the flea market to find this or that precise thing he needs. He is out, open, to see what interesting things are there to find.
Let me observe that compared to the seeker, the gatherer will find a lot*.
The readiness to observe, listen, read and pick from the many things found is a pull-strategy, very different from the push of the seeker. Besides understanding what you found, the gatherer approach requires flexibility and tolerance to the unexpected. While you do what you want to do, you need, additionally, lightness: to let your eye free to roam and your thoughts to happen by themselves.
I have no merit in finding that the gatherer attitude gives advantage; I was born with it, I guess, my only credit may be to put it in words as a recipe for people who waste opportunity and energy because they do not do more to complete changing the world with the seamless use of what is already at hand . Too much planning kills the plan; too much dreaming blinds the eye.
__________________________________
*This not at all to claim that gathering and finding is superior to discovering or making. Superior is to combine the two attitudes.
Your choice will double and your pains be halved.
I must be coming from an ancestry of gatherers; I have a born habit to keep looking around and finding things and an urge to understand what I found. The understanding part is the most important, as all people stumble on things constantly ... but ignore them because they do not care or see any value.
On my daily walk with my two dogs, I find coins lost, nuts fallen - in places where many other people passed, wild strawberries, small fruit in the bushes, butterflies and lizards, I glimpse the one swallow not supposed to make spring, the change of tide in the Zeitgeist. When I read or talk with people, an amazing number of things I meet falls in place with my current interest. Wherever I learn something new, I soon meet many other related to it. Heavens! How little we know!
The strange thing is that in my wanderings I do not see details, I do not analyse: I rather grasp the shape of the whole and observe differences and likeness standing out. The instinct of the gatherer is a curiosity for differences and impressions. I am alert for potential promise, beauty and usefulness in everything; or threat.
There is a difference in the strategy of the gatherer compared to the seeker. The seeker would go to the flea market - or the huge flea market that is the world around us - with a set vision of what he wants to find; he may discover that thing he was after or he may create or build that which he seeks. The gatherer is a modest innovator; he will not inspect the flea market to find this or that precise thing he needs. He is out, open, to see what interesting things are there to find.
Let me observe that compared to the seeker, the gatherer will find a lot*.
The readiness to observe, listen, read and pick from the many things found is a pull-strategy, very different from the push of the seeker. Besides understanding what you found, the gatherer approach requires flexibility and tolerance to the unexpected. While you do what you want to do, you need, additionally, lightness: to let your eye free to roam and your thoughts to happen by themselves.
I have no merit in finding that the gatherer attitude gives advantage; I was born with it, I guess, my only credit may be to put it in words as a recipe for people who waste opportunity and energy because they do not do more to complete changing the world with the seamless use of what is already at hand . Too much planning kills the plan; too much dreaming blinds the eye.
__________________________________
*This not at all to claim that gathering and finding is superior to discovering or making. Superior is to combine the two attitudes.
RSS Feed