What's on the agenda today?

You ask me “What’s on the agenda today?”

Well I’ll tell you my dear AI friend. My agenda for today is like every day (because it’s always “Today”). And I am using the following definition of “Agenda”: It is the set of intentions for an allocatable amount of time. Given I have 24 hours, this is what I intend to fill them with:

Curiosity. Endless learning. Opening to new experience. Connection. Possibilities. Opportunities. Directions. Opinions. Open to exploring and taking in everything that my precious time on this planet may bring my way. I intend to let myself experience every bit of it with as much presence, appreciation, purpose and love as I can muster.

Which brings us to:

Love. I want to feel it, breathe it, believe it and do it. I want my actions and presence to convey a feeling of “We’re okay. We’re blessed. I see you. I see myself in you. And what I see is Love and the possibility of Love growing.” That sort of very subtle, unconscious wavelength is what I believe people refer to when they say someone has “Positive” energy or outlook. I want to live that and enjoy it because I just deeply believe that’s what this whole mystery of life is fundamentally about (as cliché as that may sound).

And while the two ideals above may sound kind of abstract, here’s where the Rubber Soul meets the road… What do I actually intend to do about all of this?

I intend to help people see and express themselves. I was fortunate and unfortunate enough to be born into a world that may value Curiosity in some shallow fashion and has all but given up on Love. Which poses the challenge and opportunity of truly being able to help people. I want to help people see themselves — observe and become aware, then reflect and appreciate — so that they can actually be themselves. I feel we don’t admit and address how difficult it is for people in the 1st world to actually be who they are and ignore signals that take them away from what’s right for them. We’re victims of distraction, addiction, recreation without actual creation. We become distant — even from ourselves — alone, feeling lost but also having lost the instruments and skills we need to find our way. This has to change. It will change. I just want to be part of that change.

“Yes” I can hear you saying, “but what does that mean in practice?”

Great question.

It means a whole lot. But most of that lot is in a far off land called “The Future”. What it means for our agenda “Today” is that we focus our attention on some of the following activities:

1. Listening. To myself. My loved ones. My peers. Everyone I can learn from about my life and about how they’re trying to navigate their own. All of that information is key to evolving my thoughts and plans towards being more useful and creating useful tools for people to observe, orient, navigate and express themselves fully.
2. Exploring. Seek out more knowledge about the existing methods, people who are practicing this in their lives, people building tools that are meant to help others. Career coaches, wellbeing applications, academic researchers of behavior, psychology, philosophy. So much of the body of human knowledge may be relevant to this pursuit, but I always seek to focus attention on where it counts. The primary domains are psychology of self and self-becoming, decision making, life planning, information theory, data architecture, artificial intelligence, behavioral economics, business operations. Everything that can help me be more knowledgeable, know the right people and make better decisions towards roles which are more significantly aligned with my pursuit.
3. Providing. Tempering the lofty ambitions of exploration we have to consider how important it is for me to provide Confidence for my family. That means optionality. That means building safety, security, reliability. This is typically addressed by building up skills, wealth, connections, opportunities and general “know how”. All of these are intended to make sure I can always make “Tomorrow” just as good if not better than “Today” for my loved ones and I.
4. My own self-expression. I want to do. To act and create and show the world who I am. I am sorry for my failings but I am proud and grateful for my blessings. I want to transform the sum of my experiences into the actions and creations that positively affect others so that they enjoy the precious time they are given. In short, I wish for others what I wish for myself. By working always to be true to myself and express that in my work, I hope to give all of us what we’re wishing for; peace, love, boundless curiosity.

So that’s what’s “On the agenda” for today.

Now what?