With the power of hindsight I can see there was an age of fire. There was a long period—too long, probably—of trying to carve a path through the world. A period of trying to make a dent in the universe. Making my mark. I think it’s telling that all those metaphors involve destruction and defacement. Eventually I see a transition to the age of water. The metaphors are nicer there; flowing, accommodating, and shaping to fit the container.

What do I mean by explorers? I am talking about people who have found and are pursuing a very specific form of passion – I call it the “passion of the explorer.” These people are excited about opportunities to have more and more impact in domains that matter to them. They are constantly seeking new challenges that can help them to learn faster by creating new knowledge that never existed before. They also are actively seeking help from others in addressing these new challenges – they freely acknowledge that they don’t know the answers and that they need help in finding the answers.

~ John Hagel from, https://www.johnhagel.com/from-expert-to-explorer/

Transitions are the difficult times. The wind blows from wildly varying directions. The currents shift. The lighting changes. Grand vistas come into view. More, and different, metaphors.

I can feel my raw power subsiding. Literally. Some days, a 20-minute nap, an hour or so after a nice lunch, is just the most sublime thing. (Not the nap of exhaustion. Not the nap of collapse.) After running the engine with the tachometer near the red-area, it feels nice to settle into the solid, long-haul part of the power curve. More metaphors: A journey. A quest. A culmination. A destination. An end.

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