Everything But
They all fall short. I've been sorting through photographs from some past trips, searching for the right ones to print and hang on my mother's guest room wall. Like these essays, they are static, momentary balance sheets of a specific time and place. Context, everything outside of the frame, is impossible to capture and yet so fundamental to the experience. I flag the obvious "good ones" during my first pass through, dramatic vistas that make a strong first impression. Upon reflection, however, I find myself reconsidering "good." Those images with certain unexpected or incongruous details suggest another dimension of experience that is only accessible looking back. Consulting projects can be similar: time-delimited and excerpted from a larger context by nature. I've also been sorting through computer files from past Foresight projects as part of an IT transition. Whether "successful" or not, they all contributed to a body of knowledge that I draw upon to address whatever current challenge is before me. Judgment is the thing. With each engagement, I'm striving to find not just the way, but the right/better way, which isn't necessarily the most obvious or expected one. Dissatisfaction is a prerequisite for surfacing these other dimensions, for learning. Studying classical music pre-professionally in college, nothing was ever good enough. As a young musician desperately aspiring to be good enough, this was profoundly disheartening. No one taught me, until I learned it on my own, that embracing the insufficiency, without going crazy, is the point, the necessary discipline, is what begins to open that portal between ordinary and exceptional that I yearn to access, whether I'm traveling, photographing, or consulting.
