Goethe and Chase's guardian angel

Moderately interesting Finding Purpose class today. We first talked about learning types: visual, auditory, and kinesthic. I am definately a visual learner. I unfocus my eyes when I'm talking and recalling information as an image, I notice textures, light, and colors first and foremost when entering a new space. Visual learners like to write stuff down and see it to understand it. According to his definitions, we talk quickly and with a higher voice. Many architecture people are visual learners. What I found interesting was that the instructor talked about working with construction crews, and how they are overwhelmingly made of Kinesthic learners. How they feel is very important to them, and they seldom hold back thier emotions. Kinesthic learners have to move, and learn by manipulation of phyiscal things. They build because they like building. It occured to me that this could be one of the root causes of the antagonism between architecture types and construction/contractor types. We process and work in completely different ways.

The other interesting thing was a quote he had at the end, mistakenly attributing it to Everest summiter Edmund Hillary and not the German philosopher Goethe.

Concerning all acts of initive and creation, there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splended plans: that the moment one definately commits oneself, then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise would have occured.

I found this highly interesting for a number of reasons. The first thing I thought of was the absolutely fantastic luck we had in Europe traveling with Chase. My luck was ill before we met, and vastly improved with him around. We would make rail connections with minutes to spare, find places to stay when we really needed them, find interpreters and good samaritans at crucial junctions, make and even subverted the evil Russian embassy bureauocracy. We were never mugged, scammed (while togather), and we had nothing stolen from us. I would have sworn we had a guardian angel standing over us.

In these circumstances, where we just WENT to Gimmelvalt without calling to see if they had any space, the only hostel there, they had space available for us. It was there or nowhere. We HAD to make the train to scandinavia. We would have missed it if the one platform conductor hadn't found us again on a different stair and sent us on our way to the right station where it was delayed. When we arrived in Budapest, with no clue of where the hotel was, who did Chase find in our car but an english-speaking member of the department of tourism with good maps and directions?

What was behind this phenomenal luck? We were traveling all or nothing, and I was initially discomforted by our lack of fallback plans and insurance. We made bold moves, like going to Budapest. Was it the movement of Providence that bathed us in such great luck? Was it something more prosaic like if we had had a backup plan in place, we wouldn't have hung around the train station trying to figure out what to do when the conductor found us? Did we generate our own luck by sheer determination of acomplishing the task at hand? Whatever the effector, the cause of boldness and totally committing seemed to do the trick.

This runs counter-intuitive to me, who always has a backup plan, and always has a schedule, especially concerning travel. My travel experiance with my family is "plan and expect for the worst to happen, and something disasterous happens at least once on every trip." Chase's travel philosophy is "Everything will work out fine" and the more adventurous we were, the less we worried about things going bad. I literally felt lucky, like I was surrounded by a golden aura. I need to work on developing this, especially as I tend to procrastinate and have difficulty initiating things. Creativity and Initive. How far apart are they?