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Perfect Moments, Spotting Trends, and Sci-Fi Ideas
What if nature is the medicine you need?
Calvin Rosser
October 08, 2023
Hello friends and welcome back to Life Reimagined, a free weekly elixir designed to make you feel good and live better.
In case you missed it, last week we discussed lessons in life and creativity from writer Charles Bukowski and the joys of puttering around. You can read that edition here.
🧘♂️ I. Perfect Moments
A surprising number of readers have said that they’re enjoying my silly, typewriter-inspired poetry. So while the inspiration flows, I’ll continue sharing what emerges.
This week, I wrote a poem about an experience in a wonderful, Kyoto-style meditation garden in Northern California.
“A perfect moment”
I look at the bonsai tree and
wonder who created this beautiful garden
A cool evening breeze finds its way
through my two layers of robes
My wife sits to my left
It’s our one year anniversary and
we’ve spent the last 36 hours enjoying
wine, food, farm life, and each other
Flowing water descends gently onto
rocks and a pond with large coy fish
A golden glow bathes the garden and
our souls in a comforting hug
Sitting on a cushion in front of the pond
I close my eyes and listen to the
slow and steady breath that has
carried me through 30 years of life
“Who am I?,” I ask
calvin
Who am I?
no one
Who am I?
a cool breeze
Who am I?
flowing water
Who am I?
A soft bell
Who am I?
this breath
Who am I?
everything
I am calvin, no one, cool air,
water, sand, flowers,
the bell, bonsais, coy fish, and everything
that exists in and around this fine garden
I open my eyes after one more slow breath
Everything is brighter, more alive, still,
and just as it was meant to be
A perfect moment in an imperfect life
My wife got up and captured the moment that inspired the poem.
🧐 II. Spotting Trends
The internet has a treasure trove of resources for generating business ideas, spotting trends, and seeing what the future will look like. But to benefit from the internet's wealth of knowledge, you need to know how to use it in the right ways.
In the latest episode of the Sh*t You Don’t Learn in School, Steph and I discuss four unconventional ways that you can use the internet to find good ideas for businesses and products that people actually want.
You can listen here: Opportunity is Everywhere: Using Twitter, Wikipedia, Patents, & Niche Databases to Discover Trends
💡 III. Sci-Fi Idea Bank
One of the internet resources Steph and I discuss in the Opportunity is Everywhere podcast is Not Boring’s Sci-Fi Idea Bank, which is “a spreadsheet of 3,567 sci-fi ideas lovingly pulled from Technovelgy, updated to include whether they’ve been built yet, and if so, when, by whom, and what the product is, plus some additional notes and whether they’re mainly bits or atoms.”
This spreadsheet is a fascinating look at all of the ways science fiction writers across time have imagined what the future will look like long before it has arrived.
Describing the motivation behind building the database, its creator Pack McCormick said,
“Ideas for new technologies almost always appear in sci-fi before they show up in real life. Not the exact ideas, of course, but science fiction writers are astonishingly good at sketching the outlines of technologies that will only become possible decades or even centuries in the future.”
Even if you don’t listen to the podcast, I recommend checking out the database and the accompanying article describing what the Sci-Fi Idea Bank is, why it was built, and the ways in which you can use it.
🧠 IV. Something I’m Thinking About
What if you let go of your to-do lists, plans, “shoulds,” and all attempts to control how your life unfolds? What if for one moment, one minute, one hour, or one day, you simply went out in nature and listened?
“When you bring your attention to a stone, a tree or an animal, something of its essence transmits itself to you. You can sense how still it is and in doing so the same stillness rises within you. You can sense how deeply it rests in being, completely one with what it is and where it is, in realizing this, you too come to a place or rest deep within yourself.”
That's all for now. See you next Sunday.
— Cal
How was today's Life Reimagined? |
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