Jeff Buckley, Nick Drake and others...

Sometimes I listen to the music of Jeff Buckley or Nick Drake and I'm sad. I don't think I should be, but sometimes I just am. 

They made 4 albums altogether and they are, all four, beautiful. Sometimes I wonder how you're supposed to feel about death, especially young death. 

It's sad that they're gone and never had a chance to see their success. 

At the same time, I'm glad that they never had to deal with the nonsense of fame. Or of getting old and losing what talent they had.  

Their talent shone for a brief while and their lives ended abruptly. 

It's not just them, there are countless others that we lost before we thought that they should go. 

It's not up to us, though. It never was, and it never will be up to us. We're conceived, we live, we die and we get no say in the matter for any of it. If we exist, we WILL do all three. 

Enjoy it while you can. 

The Future

We all think that at any given moment in time that we are the most advanced creatures that could ever exist. But did you ever stop to think that every human in history has thought this?

There could never be anything more, they said.  Yet here we are. 

100 years ago, 200 years ago, just 50 years ago, we never imagined that we would have what we have today. 

Cellphones?  Are you kidding me?  No one could have seen that coming.  Computers, cars, indoor plumbing, year round heat and air conditioning?  These are things of make believe.  

Don't think that this is all that there will ever be.

In 100 years, people will look back and say: They still wiped with paper? They still fought wars over oil?  What a stupid bunch of Neanderthals!

Think back JUST 5 years at a time.  

2009 - believe it or not, almost NOONE had an iPhone (or a smartphone in general). 

2004 - streaming videos online?  What is that - YouTube wouldn't be created for another year.

1999 - Google had only been around a few months and no one knew what it was. CDs and DVDs were the best!

1994 - cassette tapes were still the main format for music as was VHS for video

1989 - more than just a TV in your living room?  You must have lots of money (and space, those things are HUGE)
1984 - 30 years ago, we didn't have cell phones, we didn't have laptop computers, we didn't have GPS for your car, we didn't have CD players, there was no internet, no DVDs or Blu-Ray, no real options for sneakers and the original Nintendo was the hottest new toy.

The world changes so much every few years.  Don't be surprised if it's unrecognizable in 2019.

Imagination

Imagination really is something special. We start off with so many great ideas as children.  Then, when we get older, we are taught that some things can't be done.  Hasn't history proven time and again that we can do just about anything we put our minds to?

We need to stop teaching our children the word "impossible.". They should never even know that word exists. 

Imagine you brought someone from any point in history and brought them to our time. They would think that this is all magic. Impossible.  

But without the forward thinkers, without the ones who made the impossible, possible, we would never have gotten this far. 

Let your kids dream...  And when they dream, don't discourage them.  Let them believe that they can do it. 

Without impossible thoughts, there can be no innovation.  There can be no growth. There can be no advancement.  

Let your children change the world. 

Consciousness

How do we describe consciousness?  

Being alive and awake.  Realizing that you exist. Right?

If you believe in God, it's your soul. If you don't, then its something like an electrical impulse generated by your brain. Either way, it's indescribable and undefinable. There is really no way to prove or disprove either as fact. 

We know we exist, and we know that our brains produce electrical impulses, but where does that leave consciousness?

We can see a heart, we can describe what it does, and what it's purpose is.  We can see lungs and how they interact with the oxygen taken in and your blood.  We can see the brain and at least get an idea of where most things work, but we just can't pin down that consciousness. 

Science tells us that we are what our experiences tell us we are, but what about inspiration?  Invention?  Creating something that never existed in the past and making it real. 

How do we take two pieces of information and create something new from them?  What gives us that ability?  

Again, if you believe in God it makes sense: you receive Divine inspiration. 

If you don't believe in God, then what else could it be?  I've never read or written these words in this configuration before, what gives me the ability to do this?  

How does a storyteller, like Stephen King, write and create new stories about people and places and things that never existed?  

If we evolved from from the "primordial soup" at the beginning of time, what made us realize that we are what we are and that we have the ability to create and destroy and feel good or bad about it?

Evolution works in so many ways, but as soon as you throw consciousness into the mix it all falls apart.  How can you evolve a state of consciousness. How do you evolve lucidity?  What would be the evolutionary reasoning behind it?  

If it was something that we evolved, say, a million years ago, then why are humans the only ones that did so?  Why would anything want to be a platypus?

Why would we develop fear or sadness?  If our brains are constantly evolving into something better, then why aren't we all robotic beings, similar to ants?  Wouldn't the human race move forward so much faster if we never daydreamed?  If there was only focus?

All I can do is ask questions on this one.  You have to believe what you want. I can't change your mind or make you think the way that I do.  It's up to you.  

What Is Love?

What exactly is love and why do we care so much about it?  I understand lust.  I understand desire, but love?  I don't actually think that it's a real thing.

Can love be explained?  Can it be shown?  Can it be taught?  Can it be touched, seen, heard, smelled, or tasted?

They say it can be felt, but it feels different for everyone.  Sounds like something made up to me.

Imagine that I told you, that there is this thing called renk.

You can't tell renk exists using your senses.  People will tell you that they can feel it, but they can't really explain renk, other than it feels really good when you have it.

No one else can corroborate those feelings, it's just something you have to figure out on your own.  You have to define what renk means to you.

You basically have to make it up in your head, what renk is and run with it.  The you start telling people that you renk them, and they will understand what you mean, when you open a door for them, or take them to a movie.

You have to trust me, they'll feel it after you make renk with them.  When you renk with someone, you create a new being, and since that new being is part of the renk that you shared, you must renk that new being or else you're a terrible person.

Renk runs the world, and yet no one can see it.  It's rather magical.

Sounds stupid.  Because it's make believe.

It seems to me like another distraction.  Another way to believe that this life is more than just trying to move the human race forward.  Renk and love, these things mean nothing in the grand scheme of things.

If you believe in heaven, must you LOVE in order to get there?  Do you have to prove your love to God, even though there is NO WAY to prove it?  It's impossible.

Since it's different for everyone, what if what you felt as love was the wrong thing?  What if you were actually feeling something else entirely that also has no explanation?

You can't explain a feeling.  I can't feel your words.

You say you get tingles, you say it hurts your heart when you lose it, you say that it motivates you.

Mint soap tingles, losing a job that pays well and you enjoy hearts your heart, money can motivate you.

Must be love...

No one can describe it, explain it, sense it or in any other way prove that it exists.  So why do we try so hard our entire lives to get this imaginary thing?

Just make it up in your mind what you want it to be, and live a happy life.  Stop telling people that you love them and looking for a similar response.

If you enjoy their company, tell them that.  If you enjoy the conversations, the intimacy (sexual or otherwise) or the work that you do together, then tell them.

If you enjoy having the same goals and working together to get there, let them know.  If you like being with them all of the time and would do anything for them, make sure that they know it.  But stop saying "I love you."  That has no meaning.

That says nothing to them about how you feel.

Imagine that their version of "love" is a completely different thing than yours. Imagine that their version of love is being able to laugh together, and yours is having sex.  You tell them that you love them and expect them to have sex with you and they're expecting to have a good time and laugh.

You'd look pretty dumb in that situation.  Might as well tell them that you renk them...

We're Already Dead

"Get busy living or get busy dying" - Andy Dufresne - The Shawshank Redemption

"Every man dies, not every man truly lives" - William Wallace - Braveheart

The world is full of people that are dead or dying. 

How do we live?  How can we do the things that we want?  

People ask these questions every day. You're in control of your own destiny. There is nothing standing in your way except you. 

Get out of the way.

What are we all so afraid of?  I don't get it. We'd rather die than go after what we want for fear of failure.

The things you fear are the things that make you alive. Think back to the worst moments of your life. Think back and remember how vivid those memories are. 

The truth is, you DO learn from your mistakes. You can remember them better than anything else. But you can't let your past mistakes make you afraid of living. You lived through it?  Great! 

If you're still here after a horrible experience, then what's next? 

Find the next hurdle and jump over it. Don't be afraid of it.  You think that anyone ran through the hurdles the first time without at least clipping one? You watch the Olympics and the very best in the world still trip over the hurdles.  

This is pretty much ALL that they do all day, every day.  They still can't get it perfect.  The best in the world.  

Why?

They're Human.  Like you.  Like me.  Not perfect, not even close.  

Stop trying to be perfect.  Try something attainable, which is pretty much anything else.  

You can do it. I know you can. 

You're the one that needs convincing.  

The Past

"History"

I used to believe all of it.  I think I was just extremely naive.  I believed everything that anyone told me, or that I read.  

But how do we know ANYTHING?

Just because someone tells us doesn't make it true.  Also, believe it or not, reading it in the paper, on the Internet, or in a book is the same as someone telling us, and it STILL doesn't make it true.  So what do we know?

We know what we've seen ourselves and what we choose to believe.  

Scary thought isn't it?  

For all we know, Napolean Bonaparte may not have even existed.  We only take someone's word for it.  We CHOOSE to believe that he existed.  We choose to believe the stories.

We don't know anyone, who knows anyone, who ever met the guy. Every single thing you've ever read or heard about him may be completely made up, or at least embellished. 

It's been said that "history is written by the victors."  Now if you think about that for a moment, you'll realize that most of history is an embellished telling of a story. Always biased by who won the war, the battle or the argument. 

If a country conquers a land, the culture and the history of that land is basically overwritten by the conquerers. How can you tell what is the truth and what is a lie? What is fact and what is propaganda?    

My advice: Learn what you can, but remember to take everything with a grain of salt.  

Do you remember the old game they had you play in school, where they had you whisper a long secret in someone's ear and they tell it to the next person and so on down the line until it returns to you?

I think they were trying to teach this to us in school.  Remember that everything you hear has gone through a filter, unless you hear it firsthand.  Even then, you have to BELIEVE the person reciting it to you.  Is it exactly as it happened, or has it been embellished? 

Maybe the story is incredible, but it has been told to us in a way that makes it more believable.  

You never know, unless you were there.  

This world is a funny place, and what we think we know, is never really what we actually know.

Sleep

Sleep seems like a reset button.

Just silence. Quiet. Peace.

Your thoughts from yesterday, fade away.  As your brain gets ready for tomorrow.  You close it down, defragment and back up the data.  It's still there, just zipped away in a system folder.

Sometimes I wonder if there is another version of you in your dreams. That lives another life, with another persona.  Maybe when you're awake, is when that other persona sleeps, and sometimes dreams the crazy things that you go through in your normal day. 

Humans and Insects

I watch insects all of the time.  I see how we could be compared to them.  We have a central leadership that keeps us going in the same relative direction.  We mine, we build, we fight, we reproduce, we work and we die.  Some of us have figured out how to fly.  A lot of us can swim, but even the best of us is NOTHING like a sea creature.

The problem with humans is that as much brain power as we have in all of us, we have way too many drones.  Worker bees who don't care about anything but the work.  Wake up, eat, work, eat, work, defecate, work, eat, work, sleep, die.  That's all that way too many of us do. I wish I could see us doing more with our lives.

The Thing About YOUR Life

This is NOT YOUR world.  This is not just YOUR life.  There's more to this world than just what goes on inside of your brain.  You're not the only one who experiences love and pain and winning and losing and living and dying.  You're not.

If every single one of us all stopped to think for one moment, so that we could realize that there is more than just our own hopes and dreams.  That there are countless others that have an inner monologue.  That have their own, what I like to call, you.

Now when I speak of you I don't mean you as a person, or as a human.  I mean your thoughts, your mind.  The one you speak to when you make plans for yourself.  When you're just thinking.  You.

People don't think about that.  They just see a piece of flesh and don't attribute any thought to it.  I used to be like that.  I remember exactly where it changed for me:

I was driving home from work one day and there was a guy riding directly on my bumper most of the way.  Now we're sitting in traffic, on a busy interstate.  There are literally hundreds of cars in front of me that aren't moving and the guy in the car behind me is swerving to look around me and flashing his lights to try to get me to move faster or get over.  Remember, this is traffic on a busy loop going around Charlotte, NC at 5:00 on a weekday.

I'm getting upset thinking that there is nowhere for me to go.  I'd like to get home too.  It's summertime so I have my windows down, as does he.  When he finally gets off at his exit, he hangs out the window and yells "ASSHOLE!" at me and gives me the finger.  This actually happened.  There was nowhere I could have gone, even if I REALLY wanted to let him by.

Now his exit was early on in my drive.  My exit was still about 30-45 minutes away.  Sometimes I like to ride with the radio off.  That's how it was this day.  I just kept wondering to myself: Why would he act like that?  He knew as well as I did that there was nowhere for either of us to go.  Then I thought, and this is very important in order to understand other people:  What if it was me?  What if I was the guy in the truck behind me?  What would make me act like that?

That changed everything.  I thought from his perspective and it immediately changed my brain chemistry forever.

What if he just got fired?  What if something happened to his wife?  Or to one of his kids?  What if he was having the actual worst day of his life?  You don't know.  I sure didn't.

I felt terrible.  I was getting upset, but maybe all he needed was some compassion.  There are so many things that can go wrong on a daily basis for us.  So many things that can get messed up, or not turn out the way that we wanted.

We don't have to pity people, we just have to understand each other.  Imagine if you were able to treat everyone as if they were your best friend.  Your favorite person in the entire world.  Even if it's you, maybe you're your own favorite.  Imagine that's who you're judging at the moment.

How would that change what you're thinking?  You'd almost certainly show more compassion.  You could show empathy towards them.

No need to let yourself get run over.  You just need to understand and try to find out why they are the way they are.  No one WANTS to be angry.  No one wants to be in a really terrible part of their life.  Not everyone can be helped.  Some people won't listen.  But, like I always say, if you don't try, then you'll never do anything.

So remember, this isn't just YOUR life.  It belongs to all of us.  Wake up and join us, stop shutting us out and let the fact dawn on you that you're not alone.  We're all here with you, and we've been here all along.          

The Thing About THIS Life

We are all going to die one day.  It's something that we should think about.  I think that we make the mistake of forgetting that this life is finite.  There will be an end to it.  You can be sad, upset, scared or worried, but it's something we have to realize.

The problem with the world is that we think that we will last forever.  So we don't make plans.  We don't try to live THIS life.  We act like we're going to get another chance.  Please, for your sake and the sake of everyone who knows you, understand this.

You DON'T get another chance.  THIS is it.  Don't put things off until another day.  Don't wait to get that job that you want.  You have to try NOW.  You want to be an inventor?  Go invent something.  It's not going to invent itself.  You want to learn how to swim?  Fly a plane?  See Paris?  GO.  DO.  BE!!!

People would be happier if they were doing what they wanted to do.  We all complain about being stuck in a job we don't like, or being in a relationship that makes us unhappy.  People are upset that they don't ever get to leave town, or that they've never been to this place, or that one.

No one is stopping you.  There isn't someone there holding you down telling you no.  The only person stopping you from doing what you want to do, is you.  Go do it.

Don't be afraid of death, just the same as you shouldn't be afraid of life.

People don't like to think about death because they're afraid of it.  They worry that life is pointless.  That there is no hope, "I'll never get where I want in life, so why even try?"

First of all, you can be anything that you want to be.  No one out there has anything that you don't have.  You're just a human being, just like they are.  There are no such things as monsters, or superheroes.  Celebrities are only real because we make them real.

Do you think that someone who lived in Machu Picchu cared about any Native Americans who lived in the Los Angeles area of California 600 years ago?  Do you think that they spent hours and hours trying to find out what they were doing?  What they were up to?

That's the world we live in now.  We'd rather live vicariously through someone else who lives thousands of miles away, than take care of our kids, or pay attention to our jobs, or live our own lives.

If you became the most famous person in the world, but you never did anything, what is your worth?  When you're dead and gone, how will history look back at you.  How will your children remember you?

People are afraid of death because they're either afraid that they'll go to hell or that there will be nothing after this and it's all over.  There IS something that comes after this.  And it came after for everyone else before us.

OUR CHILDREN

You have to live for your children and all the ones that come after us.  You must. This is how we live on.  Everything we do as a collective people will be how we're remembered.  Will we be remembered as a version of the human race that was always fighting, or always striving to attain more?

Imagine that the entire human race was focused on ONE cause.  If we were all trying to make everything better for the future.  Coming up with ideas on how to fix the world and actively working TOGETHER to make it happen.  We'd see it done in our lifetimes and WE would be the greatest generation.  Every generation that came after us would look back to us and see that WE changed the world.  That's a world I want my kids and grandchildren to grow up in.  That's how I want to be remembered.

How Pointless are Paper Receipts?

So I've got an idea. I've been sitting on this idea for years now, and it looks like I'm never going to be the one to make it, but it IS going to get made by someone.  I hope at least.  It doesn't take a genius.

Receipts are useless pieces of paper.  Most of them get thrown out instantly.  We waste so much paper and so many resources to create all of this receipt paper.  It is ALL waste...

Every last scrap of receipt paper will end up in the trash one day.  The amount of water we use to create the paper, the amount of energy we waste manufacturing and transporting everything and the amount of trees we cut down are all pointless.  Not to mention the man hours spent making little slips of trash that NOBODY wants.

If we could save all of this and use it for something else.  If the 9.6 million trees that we cut down EVERY YEAR could be used to offset all of the CO2 in the air and create more oxygen, the air would be fresher and smell better everywhere you go.

We would have less water restrictions if the 1.6 BILLION gallons of water we use every year to produce the paper could be used for ANYTHING else.

Our gas and electric prices would go down, if the amount of oil we used for cutting down trees, transporting them and the amount of electricity we used for manufacturing the paper could be stored and used for something more productive.

Imagine the innovation if all of the people focused on getting us cheaper paper were working on something else.  Anything else.

But the problem is: No one wants to listen.  I've been talking to everyone I know about this.  I have an idea.

This WILL eventually happen.  Whether I do it, or someone else figures it out.  There will be no more paper receipts.  We can create a website where all of your receipts are stored digitally.  This should be mandatory. There shouldn't be an option.  You know it will eventually come to this.  We should start now.

You want to cut down the trees and use them for something else?  Fine, I don't think anyone has a problem with that.  You can build a house...you can make a lot of really useful things with wood.  Paper is just waste.  It's a complete and total waste of a tree.  We think we need it, but once we're dead, we've cut down a tree that is older than us and NONE of that paper that you have saved in a filing cabinet will be worth anything to anyone.

If we could piggyback on the machines that are already used by credit card companies to charge you, the information could be sent to the website, without anyone having to switch anything over.  Every single business that takes credit cards could do this right now with a software addition, or change.  A lot of POS systems are basically computers connected to the internet.

It would be easy.  Imagine if you could get rid of all of the paper receipts that you get every day.  That are thrown on the floor in your car.  That take up space in your drawer "just in case" you ever decide to return that thing...

Everyone would follow suit.  We're already trying to get paperless billing.  That would be one less thing.  No more junk mail included with your bills.  All that advertising that you don't even look at.

Imagine how easy it would be to keep track of all of your information online.  You could sort things into folders.  You could keep important receipts in a custom folder titled "possible returns."  You could keep business receipts in a folder titled "expenses."  Instead of having to keep them all in your wallet or your purse, you know that you'd have them online.  No more worrying about them getting messed up or lost.

We could do a lot of things with this.  I'm sure that more imaginative people will come up with more things that could be done with this, but it CAN be done and it WILL be done.  We just need to be the ones that do it.

But no one wants to listen to me.  Because you don't know my name.  You don't see me on TV.  You don't hear me on the radio.  I'm not famous.  I'm not in the public eye.

That sucks.

It makes me wonder how many more incredible ideas are either out there, or have disappeared forever because no one would listen.  Mine isn't even that good.  It's obvious.  It's been obvious for a long time.  Yet still, here I am without a soul willing to listen to me.

I hope that there is no one else out there with an idea that can't get made because you're a nobody like me.  It's a tough place to be.