Time has always been in short supply for me. Although I enjoy making friends, time has never been my friend, and likely never will be. I persistently try to squeeze a 25-hour day into the standard 24 hours, but it stubbornly refuses to concede every time, time after time. Time is the bane of my existence. It forces me to make choices—choices that I do not want to make. Choices that make me choose between having a cake and eating it, between Disneyland and Neverland.
Archive for the 'Life' Category
Randy Pausch died last Thursday of pancreatic cancer at the age of 47, leaving behind a wife and three kids. Seems glum, but he certainly didn’t feel that way. For those of you who haven’t seen his “last lecture” at Carnegie Mellon entitled Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams, it’s here (1h 16m). Highly entertaining and absolutely worth your while.
He’s also written a book entitled The Last Lecture, which I plan to get my hands on soon. I’m told it’s very inspiring.
In truth, while a lot of people find his ideas on how to live life to be fresh and radical, I’ve been exposed to the exact same ideas all my life, as a cultivational Daoist. The difference is that he presents the concepts miles more practically than I’ve ever seen. Kudos to him, and may he RIP.
By the way, this “last lecture” idea isn’t the first. Those of you who have read or seen Tuesdays With Morrie know what I’m talking about.
This blind boy taught himself to find his way around the world with echolocation, just like a dolphin. Please excuse the icon on the lower left of the first video…
Short 3’37″ CBS report:
Extraordinary People 46′ special:
Below is a story apparently found at Jimmy John’s. I have adapted it for grammar and style from Mike Geronsin’s Pitchfever Music Academy Blog. I like this story. Makes you think.
An American businessman was at the pier of a small coastal Mexican village when a small boat with just one fisherman docked. Inside the small boat were several large yellow-fin tuna. The American complimented the Mexican on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took to catch them. The Mexican replied, “Only a little while.” The American then asked the Mexican why he didn’t stay out longer to catch more fish. The Mexican replied that he had enough to support his family’s immediate needs. The American then asked, “But what do you do with the rest of your time?”
The Mexican fisherman said, “I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take siestas with my wife Maria, and stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine and play guitar with my amigos. I have a full and busy life, señor.”
The American scoffed. “I am a Harvard MBA and could help you. You should spend more time fishing and, with the proceeds, buy a bigger boat. With the proceeds from the bigger boat, you could buy several boats. Eventually you would have a fleet of fishing boats. Instead of selling your catch to a middleman, you could sell directly to the processor, eventually opening your own cannery. You would control the product, processing, and distribution. You would need to leave this small coastal fishing village and move to Mexico City, then LA, and eventually NYC, where you would run your expanding enterprise.”
The Mexican fisherman asked, “But señor, how long would this all take?” The American replied, “15-20 years.”
“But what then, señor?”
The American laughed and said, “That’s the best part. When the time is right, you would announce an IPO and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich – you would make millions.”
“Millions, señor? Then what?”
The American said, “Then you would retire – move to a small coastal fishing village where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take siestas with your wife, and stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play guitar with your amigos.”
Do psychic powers exist? (Yikes!)
About five summers ago, I was at a red light waiting impatiently to make a left turn from LaSalle Street onto Erwin Road (Duke University campus, NC). When the light turned green and the straight traffic from the opposite side cleared, I was ready to go. But at the very last minute, just as I eased off the brakes, a thought crossed my mind.
“Nah, I shouldn’t go just yet. I’m going to sit here just a bit longer.” This made no sense. The light was green, the coast was clear, and I was a teenage driver. Why would such a thought ever even cross my mind?
So after a few seconds had passed, I shrugged it off and put my foot on the gas. I immediately slammed on the brakes as I saw a woman run through the red light at 35-45 mph (see figure). If I hadn’t been delayed those couple of seconds by that peculiar thought, she would have crashed right into my driver’s door, and things would have gone to hell for both of us. If I was lucky, I would have broken a couple of bones. But I don’t think I would have walked away.
Do I have psychic abilities? (That got your attention.) Well, it probably depends on what you define as a “psychic ability.” Society and the media have made psychics out to be quacks. But are they, really? Maybe we all have some kind of innate psychic abilities, kind of like a sixth sense, that most of us just haven’t been able to put our fingers on.
I have a friend in California who has a similar story. Continue reading ‘Psychic abilities?!’
I was at the Duke Medical Center today and I saw a poster entitled “10 things to do while having a heart attack.” Something like that definitely catches your eye. Didn’t have a camera on me, but I managed to copy down the text. I think most of it is only mediocre, but #2 definitely stands out to me.
10 things to do while having a heart attack:
- Relax. (Panic depletes your oxygen supply.)
- Remember life or its lack cannot be taken personally or too seriously.
- Think how surprised all the people who accused you of not having one are going to be.
- Call up your happiest memory, whether a desert sunset of shimmering turquoise skies shot with flickers of scorched gold, or how much you gypped the IRS out of.
- Tell the rescue squad how angelic they look even without wings.
- Be glad you have on clean underwear.
- Congratulate yourself on convincing the Life Flight helicopter pilot not to cut your Nikita Koloff tee-shirt off.
- Wish you had paid closer attention when the American Heart Association began preaching the cholesterol gospel.
- Arrange for a sibling to feed your Siamese cats and to call your supervisor at work conveying profound regrets for unavoidable nonattendence.
- Pray.
— Virginia Love Long, DUMC patient
Poetry in the Halls project, Cultural Services Program, DUMC
Life is simply a natural creation that has a beginning and an end. So like nature, it is impartial — generous, yet unforgiving. How, then, can we take it personally? “Life or its lack cannot be taken personally or too seriously.” I couldn’t have put it better myself.
A while back, I wrote about this idea of becoming “one” with the universe. Before I go on, I need to first establish the idea that, throughout time, the basic principles of the Universe, as a whole, have never changed. Even when the world undergoes cycles of big bangs and shrinkages, even when solar systems collapse and reform, even when seasons change, the Universe, as a whole, remains unmoved.
Pi can always be described as the ratio 3.14. A circle’s circumference will always, just helplessly, be a little greater than three times its diameter. An equilateral triangle will always have equal sides and three angles of 60º. The three angles of all triangles will always add up to 180º. A wave’s frequency will always be inversely proportional to its wavelength. Gravity will always be proportional to the masses of the two objects. A physicist would be able to give you a whole slew of constants and physical relationships that most people haven’t even heard of. These are all bits and pieces of what I like to call the “definition” of nature.
Of course, these numbers are only mere representations of nature. I hope my main idea isn’t obscured by this. The important thing is that there exist (∃) features in the universe that are constant and everlasting. Continue reading ‘The Universe, yourself included’
Lena Maria Klingvall was born with uneven legs and without arms. With this condition, she has been able to accomplish much more than ordinary commonfolk — such as setting two Swedish swimming records, for example. (So that means she swims better than most of us that do have hands.)
Now at the age of 40, she has learned how to do almost everything without hands (including using chopsticks with almost as much finesse as an oriental), and she is quite possibly many times happier than any 10 random people on the street combined. Narrations in the 30-minute video are in Mandarin Chinese with English subtitles, and Lena herself speaks fluent English.
If you would like me to remove this video for legitimate reasons, please email me.
I think there’s just a great deal we can learn from Lena. A good inspiration for the rest of us!
If you would like me to remove this video for legitimate reasons, please email me.
Birth. Life. Death. A meaningless cycle, really. But you can give life a meaning if you want to. From my standpoint, a life is only meaningful if you take the time to learn the essence of the universe and become “one” with it. It is the only way that your essence won’t be isolated from everything else when it becomes unchained from your physical body. It is only then that you can vanish from all existence and become the universe itself.
That put a really poetic twist on an actually very simple idea. Who are we as individuals? Nothing. We are simple manifestations of our surroundings. I don’t care what about us you think is “individual,” it ultimately came from somewhere around us. Our appearances, thoughts, ideas, bodies – they all came from our surroundings and lineage, be it our ancestors, food, or the simple reaction to outside stimuli. Therefore, in truth, there really is no “I” distinguishable from everything else. Individuality is an illusion – how can we break from that?
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