Translating
the genius within you
I spend most of my time translating genius: using the tools of attunement and response, creation and iteration, to help bring what’s inside of people out into the world, where it can change, serve, aid, inform, and delight those who need it.
What within you wants to become, to take shape and substance in reality? What solutions should be working, but aren’t? What energy is trapped or stagnant, what ideas aren’t yet articulated, what dream can’t seem to get purchase?
Perhaps you have an idea and you’re looking for a process that will help you distill its essence and form. Maybe you feel stuck, in your work or your life; you look around and see nothing but walls without doors. Or maybe you just have a feeling in your body, a yearning or a restlessness or an anger or a hope, that you want to investigate.
The Emergent kit consists of the 64 SHAPE cards, 16 MOVEMENT cards, 11 play PATTERN cards, and a QUESTION card to help you frame your inquiry. The companion book offers prompts and creative connections for further investigation and insight.
Emergent was created with great attention to detail and high production value. The kits were crafted at a solar-powered facility in Italy, beautifully printed on recyclable paper with food-grade inks.
We want to feel alive. That means being aware of the Emergent Game — which is not these cards, but, rather, is what’s always in play around us and within us. Emergence is the arising of something new that can’t be fully planned or predicted by looking at the components of the system. Whatever it is that you’re eventually going to bring to life, it will be different from what you imagine now.
In fact, along this road of creation, many things will emerge: feelings, stories, resistance, insights, realizations, objections, opportunities. Your job (your challenge, your pleasure!) will be to stay alert, pay attention, learn to feel more, learn to ask more, act, fail, fail better, take breaks, learn patience, exert, relax, give up, start again. Enjoy. Don’t enjoy. Experience. Attunement and response, creation and iteration.
Every time I play the cards with somebody, we play it slightly (or very) differently from the way I’ve played it before. Sometimes we use a play pattern, sometimes we play it freeform; sometimes we use the shape cards and sometimes the movement cards only; sometimes we look at the cards and sometimes we choose randomly, sometimes we roll around on the floor, sometimes we grab paper and draw things. Sometimes all of the above. Sometimes none. The Emergent Game arises when you need it, teaches you to play it, and leads you if you let it.
At any point, a new game may emerge — a game with these cards, sure, or maybe a totally different type of game, with paper clips and marshmallows, or getting to know someone by trading secrets, or putting on a hat and walking down the street feeling like someone else. Remember being a kid and playing a game where you couldn’t touch the floor because it was hot lava, you had to had to jump from furniture to furniture? Emergent Games are everywhere, if you want them. It just takes a willingness to engage, an interest in playing.
And that, I think, is the key point: interest. When I was growing up, and even now, people ask me, “What do you think you’re best at?” and “What’s your passion?” and “What would you do if you could follow your bliss?” Those questions feel so weighty to me, impossible to answer. The question I prefer is: What interests me, right now?
Think about a toddler crying, shrieking — and then you hold up something shiny or wiggly and they stop short, eyes big. What is that? The hand reaches out. Curiosity is one of the strongest human motivators, ready to activate even in the midst of pain and grief.
That’s how I stay creative, and how I get unstuck: I follow my curiosity, and listen for what wants my attention. Attunement and response, creation and iteration. These cards help me jump into the Emergent Game; the choice to play loosens me up right away, even before I cast a single card. I hope the same happens for you.
xoxox
Jenny