#ATCF | Autumn's Mural & Seeking a New Pattern Language

Guest [00:00:00] Welcome back to the podcast. I'm glad you're here. Today we're doing an As the Crow Flies episode. In fact, this is the first episode I've been able to record since the birth of our brand new daughter, autumn longtime listeners of the podcast. Probably remember that shortly after my first daughter Violet was born, I came to you with a request, really more of a proposal. I had some ideas kind of bouncing around in my mind about a mural that I wanted to make that would represent several concepts that I think are integral to understanding the world around us, and I wanted it painted specifically for Violet. Well, I'm going to be asking you about helping me create a second mural for Autumn. One that doesn't just use light and the color spectrum, but instead leverages ideas of orbits and the way that the earth is tilted. I'm gonna get to that request in a little bit, but before I do that, I wanted to talk about an idea that's really been kicking around in my head, something that I can't quite name. And so I'm gonna put it out on this podcast because I know that the hundreds, really thousands of listeners oftentimes have knowledge that I don't have. And if I put it out to you, you guys might be able to help me name this idea that I've come to think of as one of the most important concepts to understanding in order to have a good life. It comes down to this concept of long-term thinking and long-term actions.

Guest [00:01:32] When I was young, really, even when I was in my middle adulthood and I didn't have children, my idea about what the long term was was just really different. Long term was kind of a theoretical concept, but it wasn't real until I started having children. And I started thinking about the world, the universe, the things that you leave behind in much longer time spans. Whereas before, just sitting down to write a thank you note to somebody for something they had just given me, or to jot down some things or to take some project that are going to turn around immediate results oftentimes cause me to procrastinate until the very last minute. Now, with a child, I can imagine the value of writing a letter that she might not read for 20 or 30 years. Now, going outside and digging a hole and planting a little tiny tree that will one day grow up to be a big tree that produces paw paws or apples or just shade for us no longer seems like something I wanna wait on because I want that future to arrive. And so I don't procrastinate these things. Having children changed my perspective of time because all of a sudden you realize they are going to go on after me, and yet I wanna leave something that makes their life breathe easier or helps them arrive at concepts long before I did and

Vance Crowe [00:02:59] See if there's anything I can do to contribute to the future. Now, I'm around long termist all the time, but that word doesn't seem to capture who they are. By doing these Legacy Interviews, I'm constantly around people that can imagine a future state. They can imagine one day their parents who are vibrant and active and able to tell them stories right now, all the time, whenever they want. It may not be here one day. And so they're willing to make an investment in today knowing that someday, someday they might wanna share their wisdom with their, of their parents, with their children or grandchildren or even great-grandchildren. The parent did doesn't even know at this point. And so I'm around this concept all the time, but when I go to name it, I can't, I don't actually know what is that word that precisely describes this type of long-term thinking. It doesn't feel right to use long-termism, long-term thinking, long-term action investment. These words don't seem to precisely describe what it is that I'm talking about. Now. Earlier today, I was talking with one of my favorite podcasters out in the world, Sean Newman, and we were talking about the experience of being good enough at something that you're no longer a beginner, but also not being an expert. And as he was describing this, I was like, oh, you're, you're talking about the idea of the sophomore and some, he didn't realize that those, the words, sophomore is actually the combination of two words, safo, meaning wise and morrick, meaning fool.

Vance Crowe [00:04:35] And so you put those two words together and you have sophomoric, this wise fool. Now, that term so precisely describes this experience that so many of us have had that you can use it in your everyday life. And once you understand what that word means, you start seeing it all over the place. And in fact, it captures you and it can often guide you to make better decisions because you can think, wait, wait, wait. Maybe I feel overly confident in what I know or how I'm thinking about this problem, and so therefore I should go a little bit slower. That's why I'm so intent on naming this idea about long-term thinking or long-term action. So if you are out there in the world, you're washing dishes now, you are out on a planter, you're out on a walk if you're thinking of this word, or you can come up with a way for us to be able to name this pattern, I would find that to be deeply valuable and I'd really appreciate it. I know that when I see something all the time and I can name it, then I can start applying it, and I really hope to share that with all of us. Which leads me to the mural that I'm thinking about doing for autumn. Now, Violet's name really distinguished because it's both a flower and a part of the visible light spectrum. Violet light, right? It's the most excited. I was fortunate to name her that because she is a really excitable and energetic young little las, almost two years old now, but autumn doesn't describe that it describes something different. In fact, autumn describes a phenomena that happens on the earth because we are tilted on our axes.

Vance Crowe [00:06:11] So not only do we spin as we rotate all the way around the sun, but that because we are on that rot, on that tilt, it creates these different seasons, and seasons are an important part of human life, right? I've found that the closer I've gotten to planting things, whether it's an apple tree that I'm trying to plant to have fruit in the future, or it's flowers that I'm planting in a garden because I want it to look better around there, or just being around agriculture where you see crops going in the ground by being closer to nature, you have a different sense of time. You have to recognize that, hey, it's starting to get warm. Is it warm enough that I can put these plants in the ground and I can't wait too long? Because if summer gets going before I've put the crops in, then maybe it won't grow at all, or maybe they'll just get burned up. So I know that my daughters, while we're living in really a wonderful suburban area of St. Louis, they, I want them to be in touch with the seasons. And so I've started thinking about where Autumn's mural will go, and I know exactly the wallet will be on. It's going to be in between two windows that face directly west. So I want this mural to represent what she will see when she's looking out her bedroom window. And what I know about a western facing window is that the sun at different times of the year sets in different places. In the winter it's on one place, and then all the way throughout the spring and then into the summer, it gets to another place, and then it goes back again.

Vance Crowe [00:07:48] So what I'm thinking about for this mural, as far as I've gotten it through, is to think about let's place a rose at the bottom middle of that mural, and now I want to somehow display where the sun will set both at the winter and summer solstice, and I want somehow to be able to encapture that it moves. Then if we imagine that the horizon is at the center of the mural, then I want above the horizon to represent a few other things. I'm thinking about the phases of the moon. I know that when I watched Violet grow up, when she hit about one, one and a half, she was able to spot the moon. She would get excited in the wintertime because she would see it at such an early time of the day that we could sit and think about it. We could talk about it. We could talk about it waning and waxing. We could spot the full moon. So I would like to have some part of this mural encompassing the phases of the moon and how it is also orbiting around the earth. Then beyond that, I'd love to have some way to encapsulate that. You can look out on the western horizon and see different constellations depending on the time of the year. Now, maybe there are other orbits that I should be putting in there. On Violet's mural, not only does it have the sun at the center shooting a photon of light out and hitting it the earth, it also shows the different planets. So maybe I wanna add that into Autumn's mural as well. Or maybe there are other orbits that you know about that I should be considering.

Vance Crowe [00:09:22] I'm thinking about this in terms of helping them have a more intuitive and deep understanding of how time works. I know that just constructing this mural in my mind has helped me to think about time, and so I'm hoping that you'll enjoy this. Now, when last time when we did this mural, people sent me dms on Twitter and said, Hey, these are some ideas. And sometimes people found my email address. You can email me Vance at Articulate Ventures, and I would just love to hear your ideas. Some of them will make it in, some of them won't. Some of them might be there for a mural to be named in a future date. But anyway, it gives us a chance to be thinking and constructing something together. I'll include a link to Violet's mural in the show notes, and as we get closer to commissioning this mural, I'll definitely put it up and share it with you because I'm so grateful for your help. I believe that thinking about time is one of those things that doesn't always come naturally. We're naturally predisposed to just looking at what's going on around us right now, right here. But in truth, we all live a life that runs four seasons. When you're born, it's springtime. You're springing forth. You've got all this life and energy and excitement. Then summer comes, and this is when the work gets done. It's when bees pollinate things. It's when it see that sunlight being absorbed by the most green plants and they're turning it into fruit. When finally you have autumn where harvest comes and we have a celebration, and eventually there's winter.

Vance Crowe [00:10:56] In the beginning of winter, it's easy to see the beauty with the new fresh driven snow, but towards the end of winter, it becomes harder to be able to see that stark yet profound beauty. But the people that have lived a good life, ones that have thought about things over the long term, they're prepared for that stark yet profound beauty, so they're able to see it and share it with others. So I am so glad to be sharing this journey around the sun with you in this cosmos that we live in. I'm so grateful that you show up here, and I'm really grateful that you contribute to helping me figure out how do we name this archetype of long-term thinking and ideas and action, and what can we do to make this mural for my daughter, autumn, something truly beautiful. Thanks so much and look forward. In the next few weeks, we're gonna be doing a bunch of live and in-person interviews here in the Legacy interview studio. So we're gonna be publishing those. We're gonna get get back to doing them. They're much more vibrant and exciting. And if you're the type of person that wants me to record your family member, their life stories, the wisdom that they've accumulated, the heritage that you've accumulated over time, and to be able to pass that down, go to Legacy Interviews dot com and book an interview. It's a profound experience, and it's just like the winemaker that puts grape juice in a bottle. At first, it may not seem that valuable, but every single day that you have that bottled, it grows more and more valuable for a future that we can't imagine. But one day, no will be here.

Vance Crowe [00:12:28] Thanks so much, and we'll be back next week.