Calculating upon the unforeseen

whiskey river, for many many years, one of my regular blog reads, has been sharing some good stuff from Rebecca Solnit’s book A Field Guide For Getting Lost.  Here’s something from today:

“How do you calculate upon the unforeseen? It seems to be an art of recognizing the role of the unforeseen, of keeping your balance amid surprises, of collaborating with chance, of recognizing that there are some essential mysteries in the world and thereby a limit to calculation, to plan, to control. To calculate on the unforeseen is perhaps exactly the paradoxical operation that life most requires of us.”

I think this will be something of a theme for me in the work I am doing over the next year, as it has been in one way or another over the past 15.