With a few more spare moments in our days at home, we’ve found ourselves letting curiosity take the driver’s seat. We’ve been reading books, blogs and articles around topics like creativity, communication, feminism and nature (it’s especially interesting to us when these topics intersect). With less of a to-do list mentality, we’ve been more present to the information we choose to consume. Through this curiosity mindset, we’ve learned a number of random things that have awed us into wonder and maybe even changed the way we see the world.
We wanted to share these with you, and we’d love to know what kind of extraordinary things have caught your attention these past few weeks. It doesn’t have to fit any particular category – just the fact that they made you pause and wonder is good enough!
Did you know that before TIME magazine named a “Person of the Year” in 1999 they had named a “Man of the Year” for 72 years? This International Women’s Day, TIME recreated 89 new magazine covers chronologically featuring the faces of influential women starting in the 1920s. It led to an interesting discussion in our office about how to acknowledge the absence of women’s voices in the past while moving in a new direction of inclusion, hope and equality for the future. What are your thoughts? Can history be rewritten into “herstory?” We sure hope so.
You can find the article here:
https://time.com/5793732/time-100-women-of-the-year-covers/
We’re always on the lookout for new ideas around human communication (in fact, two of our most recent discoveries came from Talk Triggers and Words that Change Minds). But since picking up Peter Wohlleben’s The Hidden Life of Trees, we’ve started to think about an even bigger picture of communication. As it turns out, trees actually have a language which they can communicate through scent, visual signs, electrical signals and, get this – SOUND WAVES! Yes, there is evidence that just like humans, trees use sound waves to communicate. We recommend picking up Wohlleben’s book to learn more, but here’s our main takeaway: we really are in a universal dialogue with all living things. We see trees differently when we go for walks, we are “those guys” who talk to their plants every morning now, and it’s also gotten us asking the question, is there more we can learn about healthy communication from the natural world?
Just as we’ve been digging into Jennifer Armbrust‘s work on the feminine economy, an article appeared in our news app titled ‘This Is Our Moment’: Commission on the Status of Women proposes a feminist COVID-19 recovery.
That’s right. A feminist economic recovery plan has been proposed by the Hawaiʻi State Commission on the Status of Women that would ensure the work of economic recovery after COVID-19 does not leverage unfairly-valued labour of women, who not only make up a disproportionate amount of essential service industries in Hawai’i but also are traditionally leaned upon for general caregiving in families and communities. There are certainly some things that communities across North America could learn in their report, and we were so inspired to see feminist economic values showing up through tangible, legislative actions, which you can find here.
Something that gives us hope in the midst of a pandemic is the creative ways that people have continued to solve problems together, gather together, make art together and celebrate life together. Here are a few of the stories that have made us smile this April:
It’s been fun to have the time to click on that blog article, or look up that “thing” you’ve never heard of before, purely for the sake of following our curiosity! Something feels more inspired in us lately, and we think it has a lot to do with this aspect of the creative process.
Let’s not give up on learning and growing during this time, even if it’s at a difference pace and with a different kind of purpose. That inner soul work is just as important when it comes to growing your business.