Connect and collaborate
"I am the product of my associations."
There's a scheme popular with some who have reflected on the nature of self and human and societal and planetary development. The shorthand is: 1x1x1x1... This means of course that profound advances proceed one conscious person at a time. This way of viewing progress seems to me burdened by a bias evolved out of the making of the individual person the sine qua non of consciousness and enlightenment.
This strikes me as a lonely way to climb the aspirational mountain! At some point in any person's fruitful struggles and learning and creativity, the fruits come to be shared. In this respect the nexus of advancement can also be seen as being the situation via which sharing and transmission and learning from one another become possible. Furthermore, it is hard to locate any kind of progress being the result of an effort made in splendid (or not) isolation.
Take the cases of procreation, partnership, dialog, dialectics, music making, and everything else for which two or more must tango. Perhaps it is more to the actual instance of progress to schematize this: 1x2x3x1x2x1x2 ...
"I'm always on the lookout for animated demonstrations that great minds, hearts, souls, spirits, do not 'think' or 'feel' or 'create 'alike.' As Gregory Bateson put it, 'the difference that makes a difference' is the key to learning. For me, to collaborate is to enter into the mystery with help, is to realize startling creative work, is to share in the uncommon ground resolved in the penetration of two or more acts of awareness, listening, expression."