The Great Opportunity Is Where You Are Now

My book
Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia is available at Amazon and Powells and Bookshop.org

Here are excerpts:

Author Umberto Eco declared that beauty is boring because it "must always follow certain rules." A beautiful nose has to be just the right shape and size, he said, while an "ugly nose" can be ugly in a million different unpredictable ways.

I find his definition narrow and boring, and prefer that of philosopher Francis Bacon, who wrote, "There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion."

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Poet Charles Baudelaire agreed with Francis Bacon, saying, "That which is not slightly distorted lacks sensible appeal: from which it follows that irregularity—that is to say, the unexpected, surprise and astonishment—is an essential part and characteristic of beauty."

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When bread is baked, some parts are split at the surface, and these parts which thus open, and have a certain fashion contrary to the purpose of the baker's art, are beautiful, and in a peculiar way excite a desire for eating.

Again, figs, when they are quite ripe, gape open; and in the ripe olives the very circumstance of their being near to rottenness adds a peculiar beauty to the fruit.

And the ears of corn bending down, and the lion's eyebrows, and the foam which flows from the mouth of wild boars, though they are far from being beautiful, please the mind.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, translated by George Long






"There is no beauty without some strangeness," wrote Edgar Allan Poe.

Fashion designer Rei Kawakubo ventured further, declaring, "Strangeness is a necessary ingredient in beauty."

She also added another nuance to her definition: "For something to be beautiful, it doesn't have to be pretty."

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In his book The Medusa and the Snail, science writer Lewis Thomas said that the English word "error" developed from a root meaning "to wander about, looking for something." That's why he liked Darwin's idea that error is the driving force in evolution.

"The capacity to blunder slightly is the real marvel of DNA," said Thomas. "Without this special attribute, we would still be anaerobic bacteria and there would be no music."





The great lessons from the true mystics, from the Zen monks, is that the sacred is in the ordinary, that it is to be found in one's daily life, in one's neighbors, friends, and family, in one's back yard, and that travel may be a flight from confronting the sacred.

To be looking everywhere for miracles is a sure sign of ignorance that everything is miraculous.

—Abraham H. Maslow, Religions, Values, and Peak Experiences

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If you love the sacred and despise the ordinary, you are still bobbing in the ocean of delusion.

—Lin-Chi, The Taoist Classics, translated by Thomas Cleary

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The lesson that life constantly enforces is “Look underfoot.” You are always nearer to the true sources of your power than you think.

The lure of the distant and the difficult is deceptive. The great opportunity is where you are.

Don't despise your own place and hour. Every place is the center of the world.

—Naturalist John Burroughs

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We want to be God in all the ways that are not the ways of God, in what we hope is indestructible or unmoving.

But God is fragile, a bare smear of pollen, that scatter of yellow dust from the tree that tumbled over in a storm of grief and planted itself again.

—Deena Metzger, Prayers for a Thousand Years





When you're an aspiring master of pronoia, you see the cracks in the facades as opportunities; inspiration erupts as you careen over bumps in the road; you love the enticing magic that flows from situations that other people regard as rough or crooked.

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The literal meaning of the French term jolie-laide is "pretty and ugly." Bloggers at wordsnquotes.com define it as follows: "It's a fascinating quirkiness that's irresistible, like a face you want to keep looking at even if you can't decide whether it is beautiful or not."

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I give thanks for the dented rusty brown and gray 1967 Chevy 10 pick-up truck that my neighbor parks askew on the shoulder of the road near my house.

Its messy beauty snaps me back to sanity when my own perfectionism threatens to de-soul me, or when all the shiny, sleek, polished things of the world are on the verge of hypnotizing me into believing that only they should be considered attractive.

Are there equivalent triggers in your life?

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When playing the card game known as bridge, you're fortunate if you're dealt no cards of any particular suit. It allows you to use the trump suit to win tricks.

Identify a situation in your own life where a lack of a certain resource can work to your advantage, allowing you to be a free agent, an X-factor, a wild card; freeing you to capitalize on loopholes that aren't normally available; giving you access to luck that comes to you through what you're missing.

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While putting on your shirt or blouse some morning, fasten the top button in the second hole, the second button in the third hole, and so on all the way down.

For the rest of the day, preserve this dishevelment with all your composure intact, even in the face of odd stares and snide comments.

If anyone says, "Hey, your shirt's buttoned wrong," reply calmly, "No, it isn't. I buttoned it this way on purpose."

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To all I care about, here’s a friendly tip: enlightenment is gaffe upon error upon blooper.

—poet Ikkyu





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Image by Robert Venosa

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