Light, Dark & the Infinite in-between

Issue #33 💭 plus co-dream our next Quest theme with us this Thursday!

Dear Questers!

It’s been a month since our last note! Nearly 50 more of you have joined The Quest Digest in that time. A big welcome to you 👋 

This newsletter is a place for inspiration, ideas and experiments exploring what it means to live an illuminating, creative life. My name is Sam Furness, I cultivate the world of Creative Quests and write this newsletter. It’s so great to have you here!

Since our last edition we have run and wrapped an entire Quest exploring the theme of Light. It was truly one of the best yet. Over the next few newsletters we’ll be sharing some of our most potent Light learnings. But first…

---

💭 Co-dream our next Quest theme

Our next Quest will kick off in early 2024. Join us online this Thursday 16th @ 5pm GMT and be guided through our unique method for dreaming Quest themes to explore.

From this session we will create a short list of Quest themes that will be voted on shortly after!

---

☯️ Light, Dark and the infinite in-between

While it’s no big deal… I wanted to take a moment to address the pause in newsletters. By it’s very name, The Quest Digest usually acts as a ‘follow along our Quest journey’ type vehicle - and it didn’t really happen during October’s exploration.

Global events (+ the subsequent social media hellhole it has created) alongside a post last-Quest-of-the-year crash, brought about what I can only describe as a ‘posting paralysis.’ At the end of this newsletter I share something that is helping me move past this stagnated place.

Listening, learning and privately exchanging on the awful, ongoing situation in the Middle East has made writing and sharing about creativity feel useless. Self indulgent, even.

Away from the pause on newsletter writing and Instagram posting, our ephemeral collective of Questers, united by the theme of Light in October, was alive with conversation and creative exchange. Our Discord channels have never been so busy. It’s the kind of internet I actually enjoy being in.

Exploring ‘Light’ in October really took on all new meaning in this space.

It became a way to seek hope, confront difficulty, find levity, appreciate beauty, understand shadows… and creatively explore the infinite shades between Light and Dark.

image courtesy of https://moebio.com/research/sevensets/

When our Quests are in full swing - it feels like hosting a beautiful gathering in the centre of an ever-morphing Venn Diagram. New circles keep being added by new perspectives. It’s a neutral ground for knowledge sharing, collective imagination, emotional exchange and creative rallying. People’s wildly different perspectives on our theme are the secret sauce of our Quests, no doubt about it.

“What you see is not what others see. We inhabit parallel worlds of perception, bounded by our interests and experience. What is obvious to some is invisible to others.” - George Monbiot

A Quest is the antithesis of binary understandings. Light, Dark. Black, White. Right, Wrong. They mean different things to everyone. Even if you largely agree on what certain things represent: i.e - Light is Hopeful. Dark is ominous… when you zoom in, the nuances in perception can be ‘parallel worlds’ indeed.

So what?

Well… by creating architecture for collective curiosity and equipping people to explore unknowns alongside one another, the once invisible can become a radiant source of inspiration.

I find myself imagining what society would be like if we had more places to explore our understanding of the world in this freeform way? Something more reciprocal, understanding and less volatile than casting opinions into the worldwide town square of social media.

In this week’s Best of the Quest links, i’ve shared some projects I think do an amazing job at this.

“It is above all by the imagination that we achieve perception and compassion and hope.”

Ursula K. Le Guin

---

A round up of illuminating discoveries from our Questers

~ General
😢 A New Yorker article on ‘Why the internet isn’t fun any more’.
p.s - you’re hanging out in the wrong part of the internet ;)

🎤 Special Guest is an open mic night in London where the audience are the speakers.

👟 A Mile in my Shoes is a shoe shop where visitors are invited to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes – literally. A project by Empathy Museum.

📚 The Human Library is, in the true sense of the word, a library of people. They host events where readers can borrow human beings serving as open books and have conversations they would not normally have access to.

⛑ Poetry Pharmacy have opened a store in London! A beautiful concept where you tell them what your ailment is - and they prescribe you poetry as a healer! Also a book series.

~ Light
✏️ Writing Light when the world is heavy. I LOVED doing this.

🌅 Akarani bono awowa? (Where is the place where you see the sun rise and set?) is the Kali'na way of asking: Where are you from? Where is your home?"

🔥 A ‘Light’ themed mixtape - curated by October’s Questers. It bangs!!

🔆 I Touched the Sun: A Tender Illustrated Fable About How to Find and Bear Your Inner Light

🔭 How to make a camera obscura

Finally…

Not my usual high energy, optimistic writing this week - but the paralysis needed to be defeated! This is what came out.

If you are also feeling the overwhelm at the moment and you are face to face with your creative paralysis demon - I pass on a useful piece of advice I heard Zak Rosen share on the Creative Pep Talk podcast this last week.

Set your bar incredibly low. Like insanely low. Write one sentence. Create tiny goals. Keep showing up no matter how little you progress.

Writing this newsletter took 10 days! It usually takes me one morning.

That’s just how it goes. You gotta go through it to get to it.

with love,
Sam x

Quest Guide / Founder
@saaamfurness

the smol print

👁 Follow us on Instagram 
✉️ Know someone in need of a creativity boost? Send them this newsletter.
❤️ Hitting the heart button makes us feel loved and listened to!