it is now twenty years and two months (by the common calendar) since we came to Israel. I don't know why this is an anniversary to celebrate, but I did have a thought to share. It is actually not my thought. It was a thought shared in the fourth session of the Success Seminar I am currently attending at Landmark, virtually, which I don't love, but it works.

The seminar deals with our notions of success, but really more with our notions of striving and moving goal posts, and comparing, and the fourth session about pressure. And Nancy—the seminar leader—related that “even if you move into another culture, you just experience the pressure of that culture.” Maybe you are excited for a minute about the new journey or location, but it soon occurs similar to the last. I suppose it is a corollary to wherever you go, there you are. You can't escape yourself. And sometimes the trying just proves it more to be true.

I took a picture with Uri a few days ago. We look like clones, and we look like my father, whom I still miss terribly.

I found some of his pictures which we took to Israel after he died. He did people as a kid, but not as he got older, so the one of a person was unusual. But I suppose not surprising: no face, holding back/up the wall. My father felt himself an outsider and took a zero sum view of the world. I think I got some of the outsider thing too, though my conversation runs more to scarcity than zero sum.

I like that Uri decided instead to become one with the world: he takes on the world as a game to be played. He gets the program evident in most social mammals: they can not help but engineer play as they live and grow together.

The point is success is something we bring to the world, rather than something to attain. You can bring success to any culture, or you can bring the stories and the failures, etc.

I will mark the anniversary with another share, Helen Joyce's notes on her keynote at the first Genspect conference, which just was. Which comes back to my previous point: wherever you go, there you are. Just try to take the path that gets the wholest part of you through to the other side.

Now it is time for me to row.

I love you.

Happy New Year.