The Art of Possibility a nice book by Rosamund Zander and Benjamin Zander.
I love the fact that this is not a how-to book or a happy feel-good book. The book is a little difficult to describe but I believe the author puts it best by saying; “…the object of this book is to provide the reader the means to lift off from the world of struggle and sail into a vast universe of possibility.”
I also love the fact that this book is written by the perspective of two different people, one a music conductor and the other a therapist. The conductor makes it great point about practice. In today’s society we do not need to practice much of anything anymore. Everything today is almost instantaneous, if you need to look something up you go to the web. Besides, music, dance, sports, and theater we as a society do not practice much of anything before we go out and do it. Here is another excerpt from the book that explains practicing. “ What? You been practicing it for 3 minutes, and you still can’t play it? Our practices will take a good deal more than 3 minutes to master.” This is a great rule of thumb, life and goals require little more than 3 min. a day of practice before we can master them and put them into our repertoire.
The therapist also makes some great points, I love her analogy of “ out of the boat”.
“ Out of the boat could refer to something as simple as losing all memory of ever having been on exercise program, or could referred to floundering in the wake of a management shakeup.” It also refers to not only being off-track, but it means you don’t know where the track is any more. The therapist goes on to say that you’ll need to call on something that has been established in advance, like in oar, friends, or catchphrase, like “toes to nose”. I believe the idea is twofold, we all need help once in a while and that we all need to step back her once in a while to regain our point of reference.
The next several chapters go on to discuss how her brain works and how people can view the same situation totally different. They discuss the shoe salesman’s in Africa which is a cute story. They also discuss the 9 dot puzzle which I had forgotten about as a child. The highlight for me was an old quote from one of my favorite artists Pablo Picasso. “Recognizing Pablo Picasso and a train compartment, a man inquired of the artist why he did not paint people the way they really are. Picasso asked what he meant by that expression. The man opened up his wallet and took out a snapshot of his wife, saying, that’s my wife. Picasso responded, isn’t she rather small and flat?”
I love this picture. It is a picture my wife took of my youngest son Nealon and I found it to be a great example of what the authors were talking about in The Art of Possibility. Some find the picture disgusting and ask, why would we let him put a frog on his face? Others thought what a great picture of Nealon having fun with nature.
I hope you enjoyed the first five chapters as much as I have. Let’s hope that the rest of the book is as much fun as the first chapters. I look forward to next week discussion.
Being present to the way things are, what is happening and present to our reactions, no matter how intense is probably the most challenging thing that our transformative selves attempt. If I had a dollar for every time I said, I was going to try and live more in the moment, well let's just say, I'd be rolling in it. I love the author's advice that the simple question, What do we want to do from here? be our new mantra when faced with adversity (as was the case with the rained out golf vacation.) I imagine such a query would open up a world of possibly. Following the week's reading, I will endeavor to be satisfied with the few dollars already in my pocket as I picnic in the present.
Source: Creative Commons playground image http://www.flickr.com/photos/enerva/4359850130/lightbox/
