Destiny is all

A video by Matt Mahurin.



“You start at the end. You start with emptiness. You start with nothing. You start with the void… I lost my mother when I was 14. I learned so much from her vanishing. I wish it had never happened. I wish that I had been older. But as a young teenager staring hard into that void, this is where a certain life-force gathered pace in me. Where a certain defiance began. To defy the odds. To defy people’s expectation. To defy death itself. To rob it of it’s power over me or anyone else…
-Bono.

For Silke after Heidelberg

The dance of the possible!

“Nobody tells people who are beginners, and I really wish someone had told this to me… all of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste.… there’s a gap… for the first couple years that you’re making stuff, what you’re making isn’t so good…. It’s not that great.… It’s trying to be good, it has ambition to be good, but it’s not quite that good.

But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is good enough that you can tell that what you’re making is kind of a disappointment to you…. A lot of people never get past this phase.… they quit.

And the thing I would say to you with all my heart is that most everybody I know who does interesting creative work, they went through a phase of years [of this]…. Everybody goes through that…. And the most important possible thing you can do is do a lot of work. Do a huge volume of work… it’s only by actually going through a volume of work that you are actually going to catch up and close that gap. And the work you’re making will be as good as your ambitions.”

-Ira Glass, host of This American Life, explaines how these skill gaps work against us.

Agile 2018

Back in 2001 when the word agile appeared it was a manifesto – a set of ideas, the term “agile” also served to group a bunch of tools and techniques which could make software development “better.” It painted a picture of a shining city on a hill we all wanted to live in.

Agile was a place you wanted to go, it was a journey you wanted to make, it offered hope. More important as the tools – sprints, stand-ups, etc. – and approaches – just in time, last responsible moment, test first – were the stories agile people told. These were stories of a better world, of that shining city on the hill.

Today everyone is agile. Nobody is promoting traditional (“waterfall”) working. Not being agile is about as popular as leprosy.

Agile won the war. Agile is respectable and everyone is agile now. Big business rush to be agile, Governments want to be agile, consultants will sell you agile.

But agile lost the peace. While many say they are agile, few software developers live in a shiny city. The place they live in might be better than the place they came from but it doesn’t quite live up to the dream.

11.11.2018

100 years ago.


And I am thankful that my freedom today was earned by so many who risked, and in many cases suffered, death in order to defend it.

Who decides?

Always the Money: without control over money, it doesn’t matter how much you talk or dream of improvements, or how many grand designs you may imagine, because nothing will come of it when you don’t have financial sovereignty. Someone else will always make the final decision.

U2 are back home for four shows in Dublin at 3Arena.

Helping Others

“What do you want me to do for you?”  Mark 10:51

Isn’t it easy to do something for someone? Isn’t it easy to know what we should do and to do it? Surely, it’s a simple matter of getting in to a situation and getting on with the task? It’s simple – isn’t it?

Jesus did things differently. If people are to assume rights and responsibilities for themselves they must have the dignity and the power to do so; sometimes they need to be pushed into realizing they are grown ups, able to decide and act for themselves. Bartimaeus has been a man who was powerless, a man without dignity; a blind man who sat at the roadside despised by passers-by who would have seen his blindness as a curse from God.

Jesus could have just thought, “I know what Bartimaeus wants”, but He knows the importance of human dignity, He knows the importance of a sense that we are responsible for our own decisions. How can we fully respond to him unless we have a sense that we have the power and the independence to do so? How can we be grown up if we are not prepared to think and to do things for ourselves?

Watch what Jesus does in the story. Jesus stopped and said, “Call him.'”

Why does Jesus not just go to where Bartimaeus is sitting? Or if he does not wish to walk over to him, why does he not just say, “Tell him he’s healed”?

He gives Bartimaeus the opportunity to do something for himself and he challenges him to let go of his security. “Throwing his cloak aside,” Bartimaeus gets up, he acts in response to the call, but there is more to it than that. The cloak has been Bartimaeus’ shelter; it has been his home through all those many days at the roadside; it has been his protection against those who would have done him violence. Bartimaeus lets go of the very thing that was literally his comfort blanket and he goes to meet with Jesus. Bartimaeus is not compelled nor is he carried by anyone, he stands on his own two feet; Jesus meets him as an independent person with his own dignity.

Even then, Jesus does not impose a solution. He does not say, “I know what you need, I’m going to do it for you.” He asks Bartimaeus, “What do you want me to do for you?” He allows Bartimaeus responsibility for that decision; it is probably the first time in his life that Bartimaeus has made a choice. Of course, the answer is obvious, but what is important is that it’s Bartimaeus’ answer, it’s him deciding for himself. “Rabbi, I want to see.”

Then look at the conclusion of the story, Jesus recognizes that Bartimaeus has been a partner in the process. Jesus doesn’t say, “I have healed you,”, he says to Bartimaeus, “Go, your faith has healed you.”

It is through the partnership between them that Bartimaeus’ life is changed. Note the order of things: Jesus calls, Bartimaeus responds; Jesus asks, Bartimaeus responds. Then, when Bartimaeus has been treated as a person of dignity and independence, the change comes: “Immediately he received his sight and followed Jesus along the road.”

Jesus understood what was needed for human beings to grow, to become independent, to take responsibility for their own lives, to become the people they have the potential to be. It is a lesson that applies as much in our own society and economy as it does in distant corners of Africa.

“What do you want me to do for you?” and each person deserves the dignity to be able to answer.
-Rev. Ian Poulton.

Social Media 2018

Mainly for Stephen and Marlon to ponder:

"When your ideas are spreading, when your work is remarkable, when your organization has built a social ratchet that works, one of the side effects will be a significant social media presence. People will talk about you in ways that they like to talk… online.

On the other hand, if you spend all your time beginning at the end, grooming your social network, tweezing your Insta posts, hyping your tweets–nothing much is going to happen.

The simple proof of this is that brands with ten or twenty times the social media impact almost never have ten or twenty times as many people working as “social media specialists.”

And worth noting: The Mona Lisa has a huge social media presence. Her picture is everywhere. But she doesn’t tweet. She’s big on social media because she’s an icon, but she’s not an icon because she’s big on social media.

The narrative of social media grooming is a seductive one, but it’s as much of a dead end as spending an extra hour picking out which tie to wear before giving a speech."
-Seth Godin.