I heard back from both mom and one sister that they didn’t know where to start with the mathematical formua for a life, so I’m offering this option: You could also try it as a recipe, vis:

1 mom + 1 dad

1. Mix mom and dad liberally early, often, and with love and enthusiasm. This will begin to produce some of the brothers and sisters you will need for the step 3.

2. Continue the previous step as you can, but probably only on Sunday mornings for two hours while the first batch of kids are off to church and mom and dad have a bit of time to themselves. This will produce the rest of the brothers and sisters until you get a good amount.

Then several years later, when the youngest have grown to a not-easily breakable size and spirit:

1 empty refrigerator box
4 sisters + 3-4 brothers

3. Take all ingredients to the top of your nearest backyard hill. Open the ends of the box.

4. Place in box the largest of the brothers and sisters, then gently fit in the smaller ones around the edges. Make sure all limbs are mostly inside the ends of the box.

5. On a synchronized signal, mix the brothers and sisters well by starting the box rolling down the hill.

6. When the whole mess gets to the bottom, if there have been any sisters or brothers or body parts that have fallen out, collect them all, go back to the top of the hill and begin again.

Repeat from step 3. until laughter subsids or someone has a better idea. This could take most of a Saturday afternoon, but will produce a lovely curdled, if slightly bruised, family.

Last Saturday I was taking a time out at the local Starbucks, just catching up on reading material from “The Folder”, (being currently a collection of obscure writings on action, language, language action, deadline busting, elliot waves, wise organizations, management practices, and a doctoral course), when entered a sprightly local mathemetician, whom I’d not yet met, to share the couch.

And a wonderful conversation ensued in which I was returned to my enthusiasm and joy for the topic of mathematics. A topic that although I do have a degreed specialization in, I didn’t quite take to a zenith … but I’ve a respectible library (including Dynamical Chaos, which i have read - at least a portion) and a brain that can actually follow and visualize the referred reality which proofs purport to prove. So it really is an area I dip into from time to time. Purely for enjoyment, that is.

Now, not quite a week later from that chai induced connection, I was updating my Professional (about) page here, and in doing so referenced a note from over dinner few weeks back when JW told me how he saw me professionally. He expressed that special combination of traits he perceived, which I happened to capture on a nearby scrap … as an equation.

Well of course, one thing led to another, and so here I am now with the (don’t try this at home) formula for a particular view of a “me” … vis,

[SF:{1/9 nuclear family + 14(dance + drama + music + art)} * {SoCal(mathematics/computer science)^systems + (5*systems:design, 5*business:project management)} + Berkeley{(2*manager:product dvlpmt, 3*consulting services manager:design/modeling tools, 3*entrepreneur:advisor, 10*consultant:facilitator)^(28*meditator) +SF(2.5*dialogue host) + Worldwide(6*transformational program participant)–>5*focus:BoostingBrilliantPeople}] ^female

= an insight generator, effective with groups, under pressure, and at any interface … with a listening that opens vast new territories for thinking and exploration … and an ability to call new creations into being.

I assure you that it didn’t start like this - the first rendition had only 5 terms and of course, the math is very simple - mostly arithmetic.  Since Mom didn’t understand the notation, for clarification I offer: * means multiplied by, / means divided by, ^ used for the exponent, -> expresses yields, : indicates function of and here numbers are mostly years). So I’ve probably butchered the expressions of logic which I can’t quite remember or didn’t take the time to find proper symbols for. (Will definitely have to send the link on this post to MK for correction.)

I wonder: are there already in the world much more elegant or complex logics and algebras for documenting such interacting characteristics? Has anyone tried to document a particular life in a formula? How would I show the important influences in the train of my thinking such as the incident of meeting MK in the Starbucks?

In the title to this post, I just added “t” for time and “v” for version. Perhaps if we review the formula and refine it over time, we’ll have a few data points and can begin to discern pathways of development. Or maybe such a elemental expression of skills and interests can be used in some kind of matching function, for e.g. candidates and opportunities.

I’m curious what the formulas for my friends would look like. I’ve since sent this to my family and requested their various submittals (the other 8/9ths), wondering if we can put these together and somehow come up with 1 or a maybe even a predictive expression of “whither the next generation?” Maybe we’ll only get input from the analytic side of the family and then have an unbalanced view that excludes the artistic. We’ll have to stick a variable (alpha)in for the artistic side of the family. Maybe put a log on it for the pronounced influence of their undeclared status.

What would each person choose to highlight about their lives? Like all modeling exercises, something important is always left out - like that I really like a good cup of chai or that grandma taught me how to thread a needle.

So here’s a challenge for your spare time, exploration, and re-creation: create a mathematical formula that captures the important features of your life, or who you are professionally, or what your mix of interests are, or where you spent your time today … and be sure to indicate the meaning or function of the symbols by which the terms are related.

Continuing from part 4 … this download came in the middle of Valentine’s Day night - when I was sooo present to life, really. It filled 25 little pages in my notebook (I was travelling otherwise it woulda gone right into the blog) and this is about half the items. More to come …

• When you look, you don’t see.
• The scenery never changes.
• The soft parts of you are really hard to find.
• Your peripheral vision yields little new information.
• Darkness is just fine with you.
• Noone hears your voice, and you don’t really hear anyone else’s voice either.
• Days of the week are indistinct.
• You are neither warmer nor coller than you were yesterday.
• The future is quitepredictable.
• Singing is pretty much out of the question.
• Children fail to inspire you.
• The coffee just doesn’t do it for you anymore.
• You can’t get it up.
• You have the same hairdo year after year.
• The color scheme at your place never changes.

• Seldom does anyone just drop by for a visit.
• You haven’t had a new idea or a new friend in years.
• Horseback riding and astronomy no longer interest you.
• You’re certain there’s a lot going on around you, but somehow the sounds of muffled activity are all you can make out.
• You’re DNA has nothing to do so is sort of stuck in place.
• You fail to mutate.
• There’s no difference between your back and your front.
• People can’t tell when you are happy.
• Seldom does anything make you laugh.
• Seasons pass in a blur.
• Deadlines go by without notice.
• Your mailbox accumulates only junk mail.
• You haven’t sent or received a greeting card in a really long time.
• The only invitations you get are from places you used to give money.
• The last book you read is now out of print.
• Nothing stirs your blood.
• In the morning, when you’re creaky and stiff, you don’t bother to stretch it out.
• Everything you’ve ever done or said is now permanent.
• You never make mistakes.
• You don’t buy those cool new shoes.
• Nothing really bugs you.
• You don’t go for walks.
• Noone can get you excited about anything.
• The neighbors have given up trying.
• Invitations are few and far between.
• You haven’t been to the newest restaraunt.
• You can’t find those important remnants of childhood.
• Everything important from your past isn’t of interest to anyone you know.
• You don’t share secrets.
• Not having insurance isn’t a problem.
• Nothing wakes you in the middle of the night - not an idea, a lover, nor a full belly.
• You don’t start, or continue - all you can do is stop.
• You don’t drive fast nor visit new places.
• You’re not much of a conversationalist.
• People think you are listening, but really, you’re not even there.
• You’re point of view very rarely changes.
• Nothing hurts.
• You aren’t amused.
• Even students of strategy and expert entertainers can’t get to you.
• You’re comfortable with others like yourself.
• It makes no difference where you go.
• Suddenly, nothing seems to matter much anymore.
• You can’t say how long you’ve been this way.
• You don’t drink enough water.
• You rarely come out to play.
• You haven’t seen a good movie or a live performance in a really long time.
• Noone wants to share popcorn with you.
• You don’t have anything new to say.
• You have nothing special stowed under your bed.
• All your stories have already been told.
• People remember you only slightly, in a grey and faded sort of way.
• The things that are important to you no longer exist.
• The fabric of your life has been scattered for a long time, and you don’t do anything about it.
• Others feel something is missing, but don’t know how to tell you.
• Relationships with you are flat, no juice.
• Your visitors can only either keep their voices low or get dramatic and hysterical.
• The last time you tried to raise your head, it just didn’t seem worth the trouble.
• You need a good manicure.
• You have no pets.
• You often fail to get your message across.
• You can’t go there.
• You don’t notice that it’s not working.
• You steadfastly refuse.
• You don’t budge.
• You will stare contests, but it’s not all that satisfying.
• You lack gumption.
• You never initiate contact.
• You can’t take credit.
• Though you might sympathize, you rarely express it.
• You hardly notice those close to you are also dead.
• You are unable to repair any damage you have done.
• You’ll never be on time.
• There’s a lot of inertia about you.
• Some people appreciate your steadiness.
• You have no clue about what to do when others are dead.
• You don’t understand people who are alive.
• You can’t seem to find the manual.
• You aren’t responsible for anything.
• You wouldn’t try if you could.
• You can’t go there.
• You fail to recognize an opportunity to contribute.
• You say things like: “You couldn’t possibly …”, “Never again.”, “Not on your life” and “Over my dead body!”
• You feel comfortable letting life pass you by.
• You never bake anymore.
• You can’t say how long you’ve been this way.

A friend asked this question via LinkedIn :

Question Details:
——————–
How do you implement changes with 100% success?

What are the most frequently overlooked change success factors?

And here’s my off-the-top-of-the-head response:

Authorship: When someone feels the change is theirs, they will make it work.

Say you want as the change what is already the case but just hasn’t been seen yet. When we call out an existing but hidden reality, then it comes into view, we say there is a “change” but not in reality, only in viewing. Sometimes that is much easier than changing reality.

So what is interesting is that I at first, missed the full question, assuming I knew what he was asking. Then what’s interesting next is that both my tips in response to the actual question he asked were about being in touch with reality in a way that when that insight is shared with others the recognition of the “new” fact or reality occurs to them as a “change”.

Interesting to me that in my most recent post, I left out a key learning:

Just a day after I’d heard about Mea’s death, and before I’d gone back east to be with the family, I was at home, just in the kitchen doing some mindless domestic chore - cooking or doing the dishes - and this mild sort of beautiful sadness of an ache came over me. There was emotion, and it was the first time I regreted not being a mom. Odd really, that the reason I should have that regret is because I’d never be able to experience having my heart broken by my child. Most people regret not having the joys of a parent, but for me - I missed the sorrow. Very odd.

Then I realized: as I have a spiritual teacher and when he passed I had a particular human experience of what the loss of that kind of relationship is. Anyone who didn’t have that kind of relationship in life would never experience that kind of human experience.

A human life is so limited. We can only experience what we setup and provide for ourselves. We can only get the kind of surprises and joys and sorrows that we put ourselves in the way of.

So I do sometimes envy those who have the possibility of experiencing the surprises and joys and sorrows that I haven’t set my life up for, and may never be able to experience.

So please everyone, would you have those experiences really, really fully? And then share with others how it is? Because if you don’t, we are going to miss them completely … and we really only have you to give us a glimpse …

(I started this post in early August; just getting it up now.)

—————

One Saturday in July, I got the call that my 16 year old niece had hung herself the night before. My sister was barely able to speak. Her son helped pull the body down.

For the next 4 days, I was the communication hub for the family. Relaying messages, helping people make travel arrangements, and buffering communcations for my sister. Then flying off to the east coast, attending the family before/during/after the funeral. With my strong spiritual orientation and my training in handling upsets and all kinds of difficult communciations, with my capability to think clearly and produce results under pressure, it was natural and actually pretty easy to go through those times being of service, a contribution, just help things keep working.

I was glad to be there. I was glad to have a body to hug the rest of the children and my sisters.

Then back in my life, home and at the office … the world isn’t back to normal yet. Feeling like it’s time to write … lo energy = gotta get something out.

Knowing what I’d been experiencing, a friend sent me this:

I read an article today in the [SF] Chronicle about a Berkeley man who just completed a documentary on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He said to film it he had to just take a deep breath and do it. When he came back from filming in Japan, he said he collapsed in a kind of depression for 2 months where he could hardly move becuase of the strain of staying focused and not letting the content get through to him during filming.

My current condition and my experience:

• a floating non-specific emotion, sometimes tears, feeling very internal
• Monday night, I had to leave my seminar, just to get outside and breathe. I realized that I wasn’t my “usual self”, I wasn’t able to generate possibility, to be there for another, to listen or be present much at all.
• inability to really generate anything new, i can respond sometimes, but not much creation is available
• have not unpacked
• today I realized that it feels like I just got out of major surgery and will have to recouperate for some time to come.

—————

Now, another month and a half later, the emotional dip has passed, though there was more to come since beginning of August, and it impacted each family member differently in turn. I feel greatful for being alive enough to feel and participate with my family as I did.

I am more clear that now is the only time we can really live. People will go, and we cannot recover time lost in unconsciousness, being out of communication or in activities which deaden us. And I could see from my attempt at making the post more than a month ago, I had an inkling that being in communication enlivens.

After nearly 6 months (yikes!) since I last posted, Mr. Miyagi’s voice, via friend Dave, is now ringing in my ears: “Blog off. Blog on.”

Lots happening, but not why blogging?

Open for Inquiry: Why do I do what I do and don’t do what I don’t do?

Provisional Conclusion: After some weeks of wondering: because I feel like it or don’t. Sadly, nothing else really seems to matter. And yes, there are different conditions in which I feel/don’t feel like doing.

Am now inquiring into:

1. The art of practice, discipline, keeping with keeping on even when feeling/emotion/some say otherwise, and at the same time the profound wisdom of following body wisdom and “just doing the next indicated thing,” as Dad would say.
2. Intentionally constructing my world for committed action.  www.missioncontrol.com has been my starting place.
3. How to know when a choice is a diversion. Sometimes I can tell what will occur later as an interruption, a side-trip from what’s the current “mission” of my life. And sometimes I can’t tell before or even as it is happening. Main trouble is that my mind is so supple in shifting viewpoint, it can make anything “fit” … before, during and after! So how am I to “tell” when an inner direction is “wisdom” vs. “wimp out”? Where is the line between “aligned” with my chief concerns of life and “not aligned”?

And a bit of thinking about How Life “Gets” Full:

• I put things in on purpose.
• I let things in sloppily.
• Things put themselves in when I’m looking.
• Things sneak in when I’m not looking.
• Things that are in grow larger in time and space and mass.
• People I care about put things in.
• People I don’t care about put things in.
• The government put things in.
• Some bot gets my email ID and starts replicating mostly irrelevant and uninteresting things to put in.
• Time puts things in.
• I get farther “into” something that is already in and forget to come back out, which has the effect of it overtaking my time and space.
• Things that are in invite and pull other things to come in.
• I have a conversation with a friend, get a new idea or awareness that opens up a whole new and interesting avenue of pursuit. Then I go to Amazon.com or the bookstore and come home with new worlds to explore. Net: Amazon and Google find ways to intice me to put more things in.
• I say “yes” to something.
• I say “no” to something - yes, incredibly this sometimes results in more “things getting in” my life - sheesh!
• My life gets “bigger” - like some kind of expansion of concern, and then a whole new bunch of stuff shows up to include.
• I relax, and notice that there’s more here I didn’t really realize was already in.
• My care puts more things in. If I didn’t care, stuff would just bounce off.

There’s more writing to come, no doubt, and potentially not in the so far future … and some catching up regrading activities of last 6 months as well.

Potential additional future inquiries: Essence and Presence, The Art of Practice

I wrote this last year. Now, looking forward to another summer coming, I wonder: What will I do on my summer vacation? 

And now it was September …

I haven’t been in the garden. The pears are past and the apples now fall. Berries are still happening, and the figs are valiantly pushing for October.

I didn’t ride my bike. The Vespa never came out to play. Guests and people in my life came and went. Some real surprises there, actually.

I hiked. I lay on the beach. I visited the gorges. I smelled the dusty pines and drove fast with the top down. I danced, drank (yes - a new leaf!), and carried on. I cried. I was angry and loving. I laughed heartily and worked my butt off. I travelled way more than expected. My fingernails are toast. I upgraded along the lines of a couple of health issues. I missed seeing family as much as I would have liked to.

And RE: the renovation so well aimed at, I haven’t fired a single shot.

I’m home alone again.

Time seems strange. How can the summer be both gone AND approaching?

Now for the future … to Summer 2007, a prediction:

The Vespa came out to play. I got a new skirt, little red flats, a scarf, and flirted.

ALL the rooms were painted and ALL the windows and doors refreshed. The floors finally found their own lovely selves, and “house yoga” is now mostly an historical reference. The garden transformed into a productive lovely respite of a wonder. All systems are “go”.

I got some dust in my face at some surprising and far distant place.

The money came rolling in, effortlessly, of course. And mostly due to the killer combo of my 1) clear and conscious looking at exactly what the heck I’ve been doing in this area for lo these several, lackadaisically langorous years … plus 2) finally cleaning out ALL my closets and jouisting to the death all current and past dust balls!!

There were plenty of warm hugs, starry nights, campfires, beaches, sailing, popcorn, laughter, sun, and more than one shamelessly sexy bikinis.

I rested, tested, and reset. I loved, lived, and laundered.

The casbah came to life on my rooftop.

I read Shakespeare and played more piano than I had in all the years past.

My hair grew longer, and for at least awhile, I had (a whiff) of my signature pony tail again.

I went to plays, enjoyed live music, and wore my lovely fancy dresses with all the decoration I could muster - just for fun.

The Drawings came out of hiding, in the new clear Art Space made upstairs. The creative Call began to be more fully answered.

Future Inquiries: So what did you do on your summer vacation? So what will you do on your summer vacation?

Mostly, you know you’re really dead when … You haven’t posted to your blog for many, many months!

And then again, here are more tell-tale signs … extending the list from Part 3 :

• You don’t recognize your shoes.
• You enjoy only discriminately.
• You pretend to be alive.
• You don’t care much about reconciling anything that’s out of balance, whether it’s the accounting or a relationship or the politics of being a citizen.
• You try to imagine a time when you were alive, but it seems so far away, so long ago.
• You smell funny.
• You don’t get dizzy.
• You are completely useless at a birthday party be cause you can’t blow up a balloon, sing out loud, blow out candles or play Pin-the-Tail-on-the-Donkey.
• You are as good as any of the other kids at whacking the piñata.
• You stay in one position for a really long time.
• You can stare anyone down.
• You wear the same color shoes everyday.
• You have a clammy handshake.
• You can’t tell what others are feeling.
• You look only in one direction.
• You are adept at side-stepping responsibility.
• You can sleep with the light on.
• You have the same thoughts rolling around in your head day after day.
• You let the ice cream melt.
• You don’t eat the good stuff.
• You can’t hold a child or an infant.
• You can’t change a diaper or a tire or a bed.
• You have no discernable impact.
• You impede.
• You eventually go bad.
• You can’t add two and two.
• You keep going in the direction you’re headed no matter what.
• You stop at brick walls.
• You can’t tell morning from night, nor summer from winter.
• You spend a lot of time doing nothing.
• You are pale on camera.
• You clam up most of the time.
• You never RSVP.
• You don’t think of the right thing to say till much, much later.
• You never swallow nor inhale.
• You are a terrible dance partner.
• You are pretty stubborn at all times.
• You never squint to try to see better.
• You frequently don’t see, and you often miss the point.
• Even if they try to explain the joke you don’t get it.
• You never laugh.
• You haven’t learned anything new in geography.
• You have no hope of ever going to China, Istanbul or Veracruz.
• You never pickup the tab.
• You no longer wonder.
• You find that your sleeping night is the same as your waking day.
• You are a good partner for the carpool lane.
• Sometimes you get sat on by mistake.
• You fall over at the end of escalators and moving walkways.
• You have trouble with zippers.
• You are a good friend for an egomaniac.
• You appear to have given up the ghost.
• You don’t love actively.
• You can’t push anyone’s buttons.
• You just sit there until moved by an outside force.
• You never feel it if you are thrown into the pool.
• You sink and don’t swim.
• You are mistaken for a coat rack.
• You don’t notice that you’ve been listening to the same CD over and over again.
• You have no problem with the smoke from the bar-be-que, the smog from the city, or the noise from the neighbors.
• You never say, “A little to the right please …” to make yourself happier.

And from my dear friend Q,

• You do a lot of waiting.
• You find yourself sending the same Christmas and Birthday cards back to those who sent them, only you cross out their names and sign yours.
• You chirp up for your meal of prunes and bran, and get overly excited till the big move occurs.
• No matter what book you read or what subject it’s on, they all come out the same.
• As the years go by your recall of being on the third grade basketball team becomes one of having been on the US Olympic team that almost won the gold. There seems to be a lot more of, “You know, I could have been a contender” type of thinking.