mistakes Archives - Improvised Life

Kevin Kelly’s 68 Bits of Seriously Good Advice

To celebrate his 68th birthday, Kevin Kelly compiled some of the gold he’s learned over his seven decades. The brilliant list provides a roadmap to wholeness and positivity.

W.S. Merwin’s Lines of Gratitude

This morning we opened our Collected Poems of W.S. Merwin to the poet counting blessings and expressing gratitude. Which we find ourselves doing as we read it.

Some of the Most Beautiful Sentences in Literature are Like Poems

When we read 50 Of The Most Beautiful Sentences In Literature, we felt like we were reading poems, each one complete unto itself.

Agnes Martin: On the Perfection Underlying Life (+ the Panic of Complete Helplessness)

In her 1973 essay “On the Perfection Underlying Life”, artist Agnes Martin addresses the rewards of “the panic of complete helplessness”; the real meaning of mistakes, and an unexpected path to contentment.

‘a fearless proclamation of what’s possible for ordinary people’ (Pema Chodron)

We were stunned at how perfect these words from Pema Chodron are in this very unsettling time and how much they teach on a purely personal level.

Reflecting on Difficulty: 5 Questions that Transform

At the height of a recent crisis a few months ago, our friend Chris Eldredge send me this note: I’ve been reading Jack Kornfield’s “A Path with Heart: A Guide Through the Perils and Promises of Spiritual Life” and saw this. I thought it might interest you. ( I changed a bit of the wording where…

toast to the idiots (us!)

The science of Idiotism was introduced to the Western world more than 90 years ago, in 1922, by the famous philosopher G. I. Gurdjieff. At first, according to his students, it seemed to be simply an amusing mealtime entertainment, resulting in a cosmic degree of drunkenness. But soon it became “perhaps his strangest and most innovative method of…

life lessons from an exploding egg + roz chast

This morning while engrossed in redesigning ‘improvised life’, I forgot about the eggs I was boiling on the stove. Suddenly, I heard what sounded like a gunshot in the kitchen. When I explored, I discovered firm little pellets of egg yolk scatter-shot across the kitchen. Once the water had boiled away in the little copper…

mistakes and broken things can yield unexpected beauty

We know this was Maria Robledo‘s favorite cup. Broken in an instant, another kind of beauty came through (which the inimitable Maria ‘got’ and showed us). The handle looks like a perfect little sculpture of an ear. Related posts: maria robledo’s stunning instagrams will change your view a blue passionflower’s crazy inspiration freehand, no-rule flower…

kathleen hanna’s uplifting video of skaters messing up

(Video link here.) We don’t remember how we stumbled on this video by Kathleen Hanna, a New York City-based artist best known for her groundbreaking performances in the seminal 90′s punk band, Bikini Kill, and her more recent multimedia group, Le Tigre. She made it to accompany the song Let’s Run. We find it curiously uplifting: a…

object lessons: some sh*t just doesn’t matter

The other day, I accidentally knocked a treasured cup off a table and watched, in the slow motion of a car accident, as it crashed onto the stone floor. It was gone in a moment, an object whose beauty I’d enjoyed daily since my friend Suzanne Shaker had given it to me over a decade…

‘wrong is the new right’

This art work by Egor Kraft is echoing what a lot of people are finally getting with (or trying to): making mistakes are a way to learn, part of the path, the way things work… Yeah! (The guy loves papering the streets with signs by the way. Check these out.) via uncopy Related posts: discover…

what to do when things don’t go as planned

Another insightful mind-expanding post from Anne Herbert of Peace and Love and Noticing the Details, quoted here in full because it is so perfect: Jack Nicholson, the actor, said he wished everyday life were like making a movie so when you messed up you could say, “Take two,” and have a whole other chance. “That’s…

on making mistakes (in public, no less)

This morning a reader wrote to alert me, very gently and carefully, to a glaring typo in yesterday’s post on self-publishing. I wrote “elicit” when I meant “illicit”. Yikes! It got me thinking about making mistakes, (in public, no less) like this one made last night, when I was writing the post late, blind after a…