Choices matter.
Every choice matters. Every time, all the time, every choice matters, all of them. Choices are how you got to be you, they are critical, and if you look back on the many decisions that have lead you to where you are, you realize the power of choices and the end results and the power of the choices you have a made in your life. They were choices that you made. The food that you eat that makes your body run the way it does matters, and what you choose to eat affects who you are and what you can do. The books you read make you aware of all the possible choices there are to be human, and by what you choose to read, you choose who you are. The activities, the exercises you do or don’t do are important, and it decides what kind of life you will lead. We are social beings, often reflections and combinations of those around us, and who you choose as your friends make you what you are. Where you are, how you live, always matters. What you are doing this second, each second, always matters. Make each choice consciously; make it real, deliberate, and true. Make it what you what it to be. Make sure what you choose is what you know is right and not what was convenient or easy. Make your own choices; don’t let others make your choices for you, and remember that to make no choice is make a mistake, because your choices matter. You are never too young or old or too poor or too rich, to make your world better through better choices. When you make your life better, you make your corner of the world better, and if a small part of the world is made better, ultimately, the world is better for the choice. D "Art isn't only a painting. Art is anything that's creative, passionate, and personal. And great art resonates with the viewer, not only with the creator.
What makes someone an artist? I don't think is has anything to do with a paintbrush. There are painters who follow the numbers, or paint billboards, or work in a small village in China, painting reproductions. These folks, while swell people, aren't artists. On the other hand, Charlie Chaplin was an artist, beyond a doubt. So is Jonathan Ive, who designed the iPod. You can be an artists who works with oil paints or marble, sure. But there are artists who work with numbers, business models, and customer conversations. Art is about intent and communication, not substances. An artists is someone who uses bravery, insight, creativity, and boldness to challenge the status quo. And an artists takes it personally. That's why Bob Dylan is an artist, but an anonymous corporate hack who dreams up Pop 40 hits on the other side of the glass is merely a marketer. That's why Tony Hsieh, founder of Zappos, is an artists, while a boiler room of telemarketers is simply a scam. Tom Peters, corporate gadfly and writer, is an artists, even though his readers are businesspeople. He's an artists because he takes a stand, he takes the work personally, and he doesn't care if someone disagrees. His art is part of him, and he feels compelled to share it with you because it's important, not because he expects you to pay him for it. Art is a personal gift that changes the recipient. The medium doesn't matter. The intent does. Art is a personal act of courage, something one human does that creates change in another." — Seth Godin He found a way to enter a world that had always been feared and was unknowable. - Jacques Cousteau5/24/2011
I found a first edition in good shape of The Silent World by Captain J.Y. Cousteau. Amazing book. When I was younger, after reading this, my only goal was to work on the Calypso, I had a model that I had made, I had diagrams, I had even designed my own sub., probably would have drowned me, but it was beautiful to look at. I read this book several times, over and over, looking at the pictures again and again. The life this depicted was exactly the life that I thought we all should live, exploring new things, learning and inventing, and the life that Cousteau created is so amazing that if it was read as fiction, it would be unbelievable. He found a way to enter a world that had always been feared and was unknowable. Cousteau literally discovered a new world, and he did whatever he could to get there. The man created scuba diving while there was a war around him. This book has reminded me of what it was like to think about a world that was limitless and self created, and this thought helped me to understand going forward what I really want to write about, and that is people who's lives broke the mold and who saw the world in their own personal way, and how their views, what they considered important and a daily priority helped to shape their reality and the world around them. I made plans to design my own sub, and I still own the book on the Calypso, with the diagram of the inside of the ship. I still admire the way he can wear a red beanie. What we focus on is what we become. D "Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world they've been given than to explore the power they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact. It's an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration. It's a dare. Impossible is potential. Impossible is temporary. Impossible is nothing." "I hated every minute of training, but I said, 'Don't quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion'." — Muhammad Ali What do I want From Life?
Freedom and Simplicity and Interest. No more, and absolutely no less. I want life unchecked. I want the freedom to do what I want to do, when I want to do it. I want to laugh, hard. I want to enjoy the world which is wonderful and amazing. Go ahead, look at jellyfish and try not to be amazed. Those things are awesome, and beautiful and somehow not of this world, but they are. Everything should be like that. I want a very simple life, one that has nothing in it that doesn't make it better, one that has a simplicity of thought, of emotion, a life not filled with clutter or things that are not necessary. A life that is clean and pure and true. I don't want too many things, and I don't want very many things, I just want those things that I need, those things that make life better. I want a life lived day by day, moment by perfect moment, step by step by step. I want a life filled with things and people and places that interest me, that makes me see the moment now, that makes me focus and learn. The world is fascinating if you look at it closely. I want the ability, and the freedom to follow my curiosity, to dig deeper into things that matter to me, and that matter to those around around me. I know am part of a community, and I want to remember that I am part of that community and I want to make it better for me being in it. I want a life built on being part of the world. Too often we find ourselves prisoners of our own shrinking lives, lives created by us, in a world slowly made smaller by the decisions we make and by the actions we decide to do and the things we choose to notice and see. What we create we can change. Life is built of actions, and actions are the results of choices. We need to make our choices, and we need to make choices for ourselves and not let others decide what makes our world better. It is important to know what matters. Every action should be seen as whether it gives us more freedom or less, if it makes our world smaller or does it make it large and blindingly beautiful. Does it make things more interesting? D You practice and you get better. It's very simple. How Philip Glass got to be Philip Glass.5/18/2011
How Philip Glass got to be Philip Glass:
I work every morning without fail. You practice and you get better. It's very simple. I was not always the brightest bulb in the tree. I was a hardworking guy, but in my opinion I was not one of the most talented people at Juilliard. I didn't have that brilliance that some people really have, but I had a tremendous appetite for the work. Motivation will make up for a lot of failings. Philip Glass - Esquire - January 9, 2009 We often become too focused, too single minded, and we concentrate too much on one thng, which we try to do to improve our discipline, but at the same time, we do it with a seriousness that isn't real. What we do is not earth shattering, and is pretty insignificant on a universal scale. I beleive everything we do is important and everything matters, snd that belief is one of those butterfly wings in China causing a storm in Peru thosands of miles away kind of things, so what we do matters, but we often forget there are other options and that we are never stuck. Each day we open our front door, we literally can walk in any direction, any, as there are truly an infinite number of directions to go, an infinte number of things to be, and we just need to accept that we have that power to decide and chaange our direction at any moment. Any. We often want change, we think we need change, but we also seem to have an internal built in machine in our heads that wants to not change, that seeks to find consistency. We fight a constant battle between being cinstantly changing beings who are trying to remain the same, which is not possible, and we also battle to actively chnge everything else around us to our way of uniquely seeing the world, which is selfish, short sighted, and also not possible. The world is constant change, we are constant change, and you can either spend your life angry and confused trying to prevent that change or you can accept it, become change itself and be an agent of change. Know that the future is a spiderweb of interdependence and that there are infinite possibilities, and you should nimbly jump from strand to strand, choosing your own way. You want to be a person of pure expression, of pure commitment, of pue being. We need to accept that what we are today is not what we have to be tomorrow. We will change, and we can either guide that change or let others define who we will be. D There's nothing more dangerous than someone who wants to make the world a better place. — Banksy5/13/2011
"Imagine a city where graffiti wasn't illegal, a city where everybody draw whatever they liked. Where every street was awash with a million colours and little phrases. Where standing at a bus stop was never boring. A city that felt like a party where everyone was invited, not just the estate agents and barons of big business. Imagine a city like that and stop leaning against the wall - it's wet. "
— Banksy (Wall and Piece) "Think outside the box, collapse the box, and take a fucking sharp knife to it." "You're mind is working at its best when you're being paranoid. You explore every avenue and possibility of your situation at high speed with total clarity." — Banksy "I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element. It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather. I possess tremendous power to make life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration, I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis is escalated or de-escalated, and a person is humanized or de-humanized. If we treat people as they are, we make them worse. If we treat people as they ought to be, we help them become what they are capable of becoming." — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe "We could say that meditation doesn't have a reason or doesn't have a purpose. In this respect it's unlike almost all other things we do except perhaps making music and dancing. When we make music we don't do it in order to reach a certain point, such as the end of the composition. If that were the purpose of music then obviously the fastest players would be the best. Also, when we are dancing we are not aiming to arrive at a particular place on the floor as in a journey. When we dance, the journey itself is the point, as when we play music the playing itself is the point. And exactly the same thing is true in meditation. Meditation is the discovery that the point of life is always arrived at in the immediate moment."
— Alan Wilson Watts |
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