Beauty in Uncertainty

Weekly wisdom to level up your creative life in 3 minutes, for free.

A SHORT STORY

After a few setbacks over the past few weeks, I have found myself returning to poetry as a way to navigate the uncertainty.

I remember a similar sentiment when my life felt like it was crumbling in June 2015, where I found myself running an education program in Japan.

Trust me, there is nothing as poetic as crying in the middle of a rainy Tokyo night.

There, I discovered the great Japanese poet Ikkyu—a monk who lived in the 15th century.

For the time, Ikkyu was quite controversial—a fully realized monk who had no time for all of their pettiness, who spoke from the guts of existence and, among other things, trained groups of women to meditate in the forests of Japan (outlawed completely at the time).

One story that stands out and inspires me is when Ikkyu recounted his moment of satori, hearing the call of a crow while he was meditating alone one night on his boat on Lake Biwa in Japan. After this, he rushed back to the monastery and awoke his master, the old great Kaso, for approval of his realization.

Kaso said: "This is the enlightenment of a mere Arhat. You're no master yet." And Ikkyu responded: "Then I'm happy to be a mere Arhat. Fuck masters."

Kaso apparently responded: "I see that you have arrived."

Ikkyu had a healthy dose of "fuck it" mixed with some deep insights about the world:

something in us always wants to cry out

someone we love hears

In many ways, I think I’m drawn to poetry like this in uncertain times because it reminds me that life is suffering sprinkled with moments of beauty.

Ikkyu understood this, and reminds us all that it's not about arriving at some grand realization or becoming a so-called “master” of anything. It's about recognizing that, amid the suffering, there are these fleeting, profound moments—like crying under the Tokyo rain—that crack open a little window into something bigger.

And maybe that's enough.

To simply be present for those moments, to let them move us without needing to master or control them, is perhaps the most human thing we can do.

What fleeting moments in your life have cracked open a window into something bigger?

A CREATIVE TOOL

NotebookLM's new Audio Overviews feature transforms various document types into AI-powered audio conversations.

Essentially, this new tool from Google will turn your research into a long form podcast - analyzing up to 50 sources for a total of 25 million words.

For those of you who digest better by listening, this opens up a whole new level of learning!

A PIECE OF ART

“The Little Duck” by Donald Babcock

Now we’re ready to look at something pretty special.
It is a duck,
riding the ocean a hundred feet beyond the surf.
No it isn’t a gull.
A gull always has a raucous touch about him.
This is some sort of duck,
and he cuddles in the swells.

He isn’t cold,
and he is thinking things over.
There is a big heaving in the Atlantic,
and he is a part of it.

He looks a bit like a mandarin,
or the Lord Buddha meditating under the Bo tree.

But he has hardly enough above the eyes
to be a philosopher.
He has poise, however,
which is what philosophers must have.

He can rest while the Atlantic heaves,
because he rests in the Atlantic.

Probably he doesn’t know how large the ocean is.
And neither do you.
But he realizes it.

And what does he do, I ask you?
He sits down in it!
He reposes in the immediate as if it were infinity
– which it is.

That is religion and the duck has it.
He has made himself a part of the boundless
by easing himself into just where it touches him.

I like the duck.
He doesn’t know much,
but if only I could listen
He teaches me all I need to know.

Grateful,

Michael