Learning to Get Soaked by the Rain and Taking the Week's Problems by Storm

Our journal topic for type this week is Bruce Mau's "Incomplete Manifesto for Growth" (check him out here: http://www.brucemaudesign.com/ and the "Incomplete..." here: http://www.brucemaudesign.com/4817/112450/work/incomplete-manifesto-for-growth).

The design manifesto was first written by Mau in 1998. This project/groovin' set of design "mantras" articulate his beliefs, strategies, and motivations. The manifesto outlines BMD's design processes as well as his thinking as a whole.

For this journal entry, I picked out one of Mau's mantras that were especially pertinent to me and created some commentary behind why this one in particular is important to me.

Mau: "Allow events to change you. You have to be willing to grow. Growth is different from something that happens to you. You produce it. You live it. The prerequisites for growth: the openness to experience events and the willingness to be changed by them."

Growth is a tricky thing to accomplish. It's a great thing, but man, it's tricky. In order to grow, you've got to struggle. The more you struggle, the more frustrated you get and the higher your stress levels, the bigger the growth. It sucks like a vacuum but it's the only way you make yourself better, the only way to grow, is to make mistakes and learn from them.

I don't do this very often (because I think it's cheesy and semi-lame) but I'm going to quote some lyrics. The Oh Hellos (a chill, indie rock duo from Texas) have this song, "I Have Made Mistakes" (check it out here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czFgKa7YcIQ) that rings pretty true with the point that Mau's trying to make (I'm going to kind of ad-lib this song's lyrics a little bit, so to all those die-heart Oh Hello fans out there, it's not the exact lyrics, my apologies):

"I have made mistakes. I have made mistakes, I continue to make them.

All the doubts I've faced, all the doubts I've faced, I continue to face them.

Nothing is a waste. Nothing is a waste if you learn from it.

The sun does not cause us, the sun it does not cause us to grow. It is the rain that will strengthen, the rain that will strengthen your soul. It will make you whole."

In essence, you've got to be willing walk through the rain, you've got to get soaked, drenched even, in order to figure it all out. This week, I'm going to tackle obstacles head on. I'm going to take the mistakes I'll make with stride and turn them into an opportunities to grow. Mau says you've got to allow events, the mistakes you make, to change you. You've got to be willing to grow.

So this week, Mother Nature, bring on the rain (or the snow, since that's apparently the forecast for Thursday), cause I'm taking all these projects by storm (and yes, I do come up with these puns all by myself, making my pun-loving friends proud).