I Chased the Northern Lights for Years🌠🌌🌆... You Won't Believe Where I Found Them!

E161: Rest & Recap 23 - Interviewed for CBC radio, WoP13, Canadian Thanksgiving🍁

The Glories and the Wrath of Mother Nature

Nature opened up her treasure box this week, delivering a bounty of jewelled tones placed on a cushiony swirl of dark, stormy cloud called Hurricane Milton.

The contradiction was not lost on me.

This is supposed to be the “REST” edition - where we pause and discuss one way we can replenish. I typically don’t plan an essay. It is my way of creating a sustainable publishing habit. However, life happened and I wanted to share (it’s lots of lush photos and only 113 sentences)! Get to the part about the CBC interview with Manjula Selvarajah where I discuss the reasons we should relish our vacation, and spend time in nature to recharge our personal energy. The dots will connect.

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First, The Wrath Wrapped in Hurricane Milton:

I’m dedicating this issue to one of our own Tribe Tilt, my dearest writing friend

Cindy Villanueva

.

Her beautiful plans to share their wedding vows on this beach that means so much to her started disintegrating as Hurricane Milton barrelled across Florida. Congratulations on your marriage, Cindy and Ted. May you continue to find calm in each others arms, no matter the many storms that rage around us.

The beach before

A trifecta of Earth, Sky, and Space

Glory 1: On Forest Bathing (and being interviewed for radio) 🍁

Before Canada heads into six months of cold and grey, Nature saturates us with colour so we can stockpile the muscle-memory knowledge that ‘there will come a Spring’.

Forest bathing, an ancient Japanese tradition of renewal and replenishment, allows us to worship in the cathedral that God created under a sapphire blue sky. We chased rubies, emeralds, and citrine quartz - the colours of fall leaves along our walks in Algonquin Park.

Did you know I do radio interviews? CBC radio host Manjula Selvarajah interviews me on the topic of OOO … Out of Office messages. It evolved into a great conversation on “active recovery” and “replenishing your battery”:

Listen at 3:12 Hot or not: The out-of-office message aired September 5, 2024

Glory 2: The Heavens Open and Out Drops the Milky Way 🌌

We hit the dark sky reserve at Torrance Barrens, hunting for the Northern Lights. No luck. BUT, the inky sky rewarded us with a night sparkling with diamonds and studded with pearls— the Milky Way. Photo is from an iPhone. Multiple shooting stars reminded us to slow down and breathe. We are minuscule and momentary in this vast galaxy.

© CCordeiro

Glory 3: The Northern Lights … FINALLY! 🌆

11:23pm Thursday night. Stop the presses. Finally! I found them! And I could not be sporting a bigger smile!

“Quick, grab your sneakers,” I yelled to my husband as I raced down the stairs, throwing on my winter coat, a pair of Uggs and grabbing my car keys. “Someone just posted a clear-as-day photo of the Northern Lights above Lake Ontario. Got your phone? We’re going hunting!” We charged out of the house, and made a beeline for a park on the lake, a little further away from the persistent lights in our pretty town.

At first, we could not see much (a metaphor for life?). It took a while for our eyes to adjust. Then someone showed us which part of the lake-sky (is that a word?) to watch as their DSLR camera setting sensed the colours through the void.

And suddenly — asif they had just been waiting for us to arrive — we started seeing shimmers. Slight hints of the thinnest green, like Wildfire (Game of Thrones) started vaporizing in the air. Then suddenly the reds appeared. The phone camera on manual setting with a long exposure gave us better photos. For 10 whole minutes there were collective oooohs and aaaahs filling the air as Mother Nature, dressed in pale lime, chartreuse and beetroot tulle, performed her ballet and the Northern Lights pirouetted across the heavens, visible to the naked eye. The photos make it seem a lot more dramatic, like we were bathed in an alien shower of pinks and reds.

© Karena de Souza, Northern Lights over Toronto, Oct 11, 2024, Samsung S23

After years and years and years of hunting these elusive beauties across Alberta, Northern Ontario and Iceland, I now found them … in my own hometown! When you stop trying so hard life finally gives you what you were looking for. Another life metaphor?

If you are chasing some dream, I hope it comes true too!

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Thanksgiving Blessings 🍁 🦃

Happy Thanksgiving to our many Canadian members celebrating this weekend¹! I’ll use this moment to give thanks for each of you reading this post today, wherever in the world you may be. Community—whether it is friends, family, colleagues and neighbours—is the glue that holds humanity together … and upholds humanity too, encouraging us to think better, aim higher. (Thanks for that visual from our conversation today

Eric Ho

)
Click here to read past Thanksgiving issues: Mrs Keisman’s Vermouth Turkey, and Slowing to the Speed of Spawning Salmon, among them.

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Recap: Digest of issues 155 - 160

My takeaways from this 23rd cycle of seven²:

• Celebrating three years of publishing 🎉, I used the opportunity to look ahead to the next 1000 days of opportunity (& redesigned my home page.)

• My foray into AI and ChatGPT prompt writing taught me about leveraging the technology rather than being led by it

• New themes emerging: Community, “Sustain”

What did you notice over the past two months?

Revisit the past six editions through the eyes of other readers:

21st-CENTURY SKILLS & RAISING FUTURE READY LEADERS: Liminality, Grief, Leveraging Community, Foresight

Liminality includes learning to say goodbye to the past. Deciphering grief has a place as we learn to navigate between old and new eras. Therefore it is an important 21st-century skill.

James Bailey

: Grief is love with nowhere to go. The place for that love to go is gratitude. Which is where you are focusing it Karena.

Rick Lewis

: I love that you shared this quote from Maya Angelou, "Every storm runs out of rain". So simple and beautiful. So much wisdom there. It helps put in perspective the big challenges of our time, helping me remember to breathe and recognize the impermanence in the whole show.

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Leveraging AI

FUTURE OF WORK: How can new technology change our workforce?

I needed a use-case to explore prompt engineering. Could AI uncover a pattern in the words of 150 editions that I hadn’t yet noticed? The resulting data surprised me, and helped build my Bingo card to help new and regular readers find relevant content on this newsletter:

Brought back memories from some of my earliest readers

Simone Silverstein

: Congrats, Karena. I remember those early days well. ❤️

It also launched the 1000-day-radar challenge re-purposing an idea in Tilter Arman Khodadoost’s newsletter.

Arman Khodadoost

: such a wonderful idea Karena. i like this 1000 day timeline too. its long enough to make a major shift and short enough to still seem doable.

I experimented on myself, inspired by a quilt that my grandmother started in 1927:

Becky Isjwara

is now planning on joining me in my quest: I'm looking forward to your continuous "publish already!" works ;)

It also inspired me to ask “How does new technology reshape society?”

jackie alcalde marr

: I like the way you connected those dots, Karena. It certainly brings forward the ideas of "innovation waits for no one" or "where there's a will, there's a way." It seems our innovative spirit always finds a way to speed life along or make it easier.

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WoP13 is now in session, and Tribe Tilt welcomes so many new members! Our small and supportive community believes in the best of humanity - connecting people, sharing ideas, and exploring thoughts respectfully. We believe we can make a difference to the people and places that are precious to us. And that the best idea can come from anyone, anywhere, at any time.

Did you like the concept that every 7th edition is a Rest edition? These compendiums make a great issue if you would like to share this newsletter with others as you invite them to join our Tribe of difference makers.

Is this your first visit to Tilt the Future? Join our Tribe Tilt by hitting this button below:

Stay healthy. From there all else becomes possible.
See you next week.
Karena

1. Canadian Thanksgiving follows the crop cycle, more closely linked to the Harvest Festivals celebrated around Europe at present - a moment to thank Mother Earth for her gifts of nurture and nature.

2. I write in cycles of seven and explore new ideas and synergies over the past six weeks of essays. This comes from the "Colosseum of Ideas" concept in Write of Passage. My major themes:

• Raising Future-Ready Leaders, including necessary 21st-century skills

• Impact of the Future of Work over the next decade

• Exploring empowering conversations on Climate