The "OOO" tree.

Hi,

Recently my work is taking me into a space that is truly between the ears. As the podcast audience, readers of this blog and my website will know I examine the "things that make people tick" and to some degree help them keep time with the world.

This has taken me toward the works of Erving Goffman and Anthony Giddens. Sociological analogies of performance and narrative in creating the internal (and projecting the external) views of self.

But I've been compelled to jot down these few Scribbles not because of that, but something slightly different.

It's odd how one can find oneself at times almost inexplicably drawn to certain people. Perhaps this is mere illusion born of the retrospective lens, but it does seem when I sit back and consider where this journey of self discovery has taken me, and the questions it has posited, that life has somehow managed to ensure that those with answers to those questions cross my path.

Perhaps this supposed coincidence is an act of wilful creation, since often one only "see's" what one is looking for, but I am not entirely convinced by that argument since one can look and still never find.

It is tempting at times like these to look for a theological answer... people point to "God" working in mysterious ways" or "ancestors having put in a good word with the big guy" etc.

Perhaps, But I prefer a more secular thought path. I recently coined the term "Optimisticality" to explain what it is that I "do". Optimisticality, I would say is "The art of being stubbornly optimistic"
Of seeing the oak inside the acorn.

But it is more than that. There are, at time of writing three "O" s that are central to my philosophy of optimisticality.

Optimism?
Sure... that's there. In the roots. Without planting yourself in the soil of "possible" you won't grow. .

Optimisation.
The trunk. The process and routines by which we build resilience and strength, raising the branches out to a height and spread where they can reach...

Opportunities.
Which will present themselves regardless of whether your branches reach or not.

So, water your tree (or acorn) regularly with belief and curiosity, build a strong trunk. And maybe when opportunity presents itself, your branches might just reach far enough to enable you to grasp it. Allowing leaves to sprout and the tree to grow yet stronger.

If so, you'll marvel that "luck" brought you into contact with those opportunity. But really was it luck?

or something else?

Seneca the Younger

Sarah.
xx