March 1, 2026
Kwikwaz
A few years ago I designed Emergent, a creativity/oracle deck that you can play tabletop, or online for free (at emergentgame.com). Of course life is the real emergent game; the cards are just a way to tune in to your aliveness. There are lots of other ways to tune in. Here’s a little game you’re probably already playing without noticing: Yes Mugs.
Have you ever gone to a coffee shop that has a bunch of one-off mugs hanging on hooks for you to choose from? There’s one with a football team and another with bunnies and rainbows and a Garfield one and one that says WORLD’S GREATEST GRANDPA. And it’s a pleasure to look and pick.
How do you pick? You’re using your sensing capacity to perceive and choose. Which sense are you using? Sight is involved, probably, unless you’re blind, in which case you’re going to be relying more on touch. But I don’t think sight or touch is the primary sense you’re using. I think there’s a more fundamental sense than that, a more holistic sense that has to do with your whole self. Your body is speaking. You’re picking the mug that pleases, nourishes, vibes with, your aliveness.
We’ve all got this sense. My hypothesis is that we don’t have a name for it because it’s the water we swim in. It’s so pervasive that we don’t even notice it. But it’s essential to our own being and living.
Let’s name it! I have a proposal. Yesterday I discovered that the proto-Germanic word for “full of life” is kwikwaz. Kwikwaz! Isn’t that great? It’s onomatopoetic, full of life itself. It’s the origin of our word “quick” to mean “alive,” as in “the quick and the dead” or “quickening” to describe the first time a pregnant person feels the fetus move in the womb. Until and unless I come up with something better, I’m gonna use “kwikwaz” to mean “the sense of aliveness in ourselves or others.”
And EVERY alive body has this sense. Bacteria have it, plants have it, mushrooms have it, flamingos and chameleons and grasshoppers and sloths have it. And we can feel it in each other. It’s like eyes meeting, only more so.
You know who doesn’t have it? AI. I think that’s why you can tell when something is “written” by AI. Your kwikwaz is feeling for the kwikwaz on the other end, and there isn’t any. And that feels weird to us precisely because the FORM of what we’re probing looks/feels/sounds alive. (“This is a rich question,” AI said to me yesterday. So creepy!)
In short, in this day of AI, it’s more important than ever to tune in and pay attention to kwikwaz. So next time you go to the kitchen to get a drink, play Yes Mugs in your cabinet. Notice what it feels like to be called to a choice. Where in your body are you choosing from? Which mug would your heart choose? Which mug would your gut prefer? These are not trivial questions. This is crucial sensing-capacity-building.
Kwikwaz, my loves!
