The Best Way to Learn Anything - Florilegium

This is a slower way, but it's a real way. Over time, you get true mastery, rather than imposter syndrome.

Florilegium - used to be normal, for more than just the florists. Let me spell out the actions: gather beautiful flowers, walk with eyes open, expect to find amazing things in this wide world, and if you can in some way capture its image or form (sketch, record, photograph, write), then pluck sustainably, and show your friends.

This is where it comes from:

Florilegium - it means bouquet (gotta love the way the french spell).

In the old world, people would go around and gather together the most beautiful flowers they could find, and then actually sell those - typically. Good business. Why? Well, they made money while also making everyone else’s reality beautiful, and they also made their own world beautiful at the same time - great trades.

I also can’t help but see this medieval young woman (Germanic - think sound of music), walking through the meadow on her way home. She’s stopped in her tracks, takes one small step to re-balance, and peers to the far treeline at the edge of the forest. As she approaches, she sees a flower, golden-yellow and blue hues, radiant in the sun. It is in a patch, so she knows that she can take just one back and show the rest of her friends, so she does.

How is Florilegium the best way to learn? Do by analogy what people used to do with flowers.

Gather beautiful flowers (insights), walk with eyes open, expect to find amazing things in this wide world, and if you can in some way capture its image or form (sketch, record, photograph, write), then pluck sustainably, and show your friends.

This is literally how everything good was found or discovered, even eureka means “I found it” in Greek.

If all you do is collect, you will learn a lot. However, what makes florilegium the best way to learn is actually not just in the gathering, but in the arrangement and the sharing function.

Gather all the most beautiful things you can find, and think about those things as deeply as you can - yes! But, then if you somehow capture (pluck) why that something is beautiful and how it reminds you of other beautiful and useful things (arrangement), and then publish that work (share it), over time - that’s the gold.

Think about it - Now, any time someone asks you about a topic you have written about, you have personal knowledge, and a personal story and connection to those ideas. This is the opposite of imposter syndrome, and a road to true mastery because everything you have learned, you have learned, by living and sharing.

The limit of your life and the limit of your true knowledge, your true mastery, is the limit of your sharing.

But, beyond knowledge and learning and sharing, because this method is literally gathering beauty in your life, if your living and learning is vast, so is the beauty in your life, by definition…and the beauty that you can help bring to others’ lives, that’s endless, when you live in this way.

You have stopped to see the flowers, again and again, and they have made you, and those around you, better over time.

This is the method that I am looking to practice here in my substack and on all my social media platforms. I want to gather all the most beautiful and useful things I can find, and share them with you. That means my content is indeed, my life’s content. That also means that I don’t really have a target audience or a strategy other than sharing what is ‘actually’ helping me and is useful, and if it’s beautiful and valuable to me, over time, I assume it will be beautiful and valuable to others (shared nature and all that).

Because of my passions and interests and background in Christian Theology, and Christian Practice, pretty much everything I write will be done with God on the mind, or to Him, because, indeed, he is the source of the beauty that we see, and the move is therefore natural to talk to him about the things we find in his great green earth.

So, if you’re hungry, like I am, for God-ward meditations and movements meant to talk about the beauties in this life, that are not click-bait, nor meant to be, but rather bouquets, I want to welcome you not only to the Confessions of a Christian Salesman, but also to interact with me. Dialogue in the way of beauty, and let’s work together to make this world, indeed, a better and more beautiful place. In the end, I want the best life for you my friend, the very best life in Christ.

Now and always.

This is my prayer,

and these,

these are my Confessions