Synchronicity is an interesting phenomenon.

I woke up today feeling a little gloomy and tired. After breakfast I found myself revisiting the works of Daniel Quinn. His most famous book is Ishmael – a book I read and decided to import and sell in the bookshop I owned in the first half of the 90’s. I sold well over 500 copies of the book which was quite a feat considering my store’s focus was business and IT literature.

Anyway, this morning I re-read ”If They Give You Lined Paper, Write Sideways” which was written by Quinn in 2007. It is an edited transcript he has with one of his readers and attempts to ”show” how he does what he does. There is loads of interesting stuff there and I tweeted a few quotes during the day.

In the appendix of the book he republishes an essay titled ”The New Renaissance”. I would like to urge you to read it. Maybe even a couple of times. This quote is so telling of Quinn’s mode of thinking:

”Nevertheless, I can tell you with complete confidence that something extraordinary is going to happen in the next two or three decades. The people of our culture are going to figure out how to live sustainably – or they’re not. And either way, it’s certainly going to be extraordinary.”

In the essay Quinn also states that our separation from nature is the most dangerous idea in existence. There is us and there is nature. If this does not change in our minds Quinn declares us doomed.

Now the bit of synchronicity. About an hour after I finished the book I started tinkering on my web site and tweaking the focus of my services more towards sustainability. I checked Facebook at one point and then this Huffington Post article showed up in my feed: ”Nature Connection Will Be the Next Human Trend”. It is an interesting read so please take the time. Not as sharp as Quinn, but in the same playing field.

The gloomy start of this day is long gone. I’ll go to bed with some contentment as one of the outcomes of today’s reading and writing is a newly formulated personal mission:

To make a real and positive contribution in the increasingly urgent process of making human life on Earth sustainable.

It is perhaps a bit lofty but hey that is me. This is what I will try to navigate my life towards in the decades ahead.