verse Eleven: the useful parts

After yesterday's metaphysical foray, v11 makes me very happy. It's concrete. Tangible. It's all about what you can touch as contrasted with what you can use.

You can touch a doorframe. The useful part of a doorframe is the empty space that it surrounds. Without the space, I'd walk right into the wall. Hm. Even do that with lots of space between the doorframes.

Profit comes from what is there, usefulness from what is not. The big phrase that keeps going through my mind that must resonate somehow is that one gets stronger not on the days one runs, but on the days one rests. Profit comes from grappling with challenge after challenge; usefulness comes from what is left in one's head as learning from the problems 1 through n-1.

In my life, what is not here are the answers to what happens next. What is here are the tracings of things that have happened before. From which I can learn (both good and not-so-good lessons). Trust. Sometimes I get so wired up that I cannot see that I will solve problems with the same intentionality that has brought me successfully to this point. As if I am starting over each time I'm ruffled. Too stressed. Or taking that uncarved block idea a little too literally. If I really am one with everything, then I have all the possible answers in my back pocket. And I am old enough to know that there is more than one right answer to any situation.

I think about politics, and Microsoft's old marketing strategy. Establish a beachhead and then go backfill. M'soft used to announce all kinds of products that were barely more than half-baked, fresh off the laser printer. Then they'd take months or years to actually sell whatever did what they promised up front. Good way to zamboni competitors. Politicians get into trouble, or announce things, and then they have to solve the problem. Attention spans being what they are today, it seems like there is only one shot to get something right. But that's only true on live TV. Movie scenes get more than one take. Politicians get more than one news cycle, unless it's something truly abysmal like getting caught engaging in homosexual acts after a lifetime of preaching and voting homophobia.

But I digress. Profit comes from what is in front of me (these days, usually an enormous unknown challenge); usefulness comes from the spaces around that challenge. And I run much more often than I rest, but I don't lift weights every day. Fuel comes from the food I eat. Usefulness comes from that which I don't - because if I did eat everything else, it wouldn't be fuel anymore.