Alchemy

A good number of years ago, while I was having a benign cyst removed from my back, my doctor asked me, "So, how do you see life? As a glass half empty, or a glass half full?"

The question took me by surprise, especially since he was in the process of scalpeling the hell out of me at that moment, as well as the local anesthesia beginning to work. I answered, "Uh, I...dunno." At this point, he had already opened me up and was starting to slice and dice the golf ball-sized cyst, located very near the surface of the skin, so that it would be more manageable during removal. Once the anesthesia fully kicked in, the whole thing felt like a back massage. A really bloody, squishy-sounding back massage.

The doctor continued to talk. Even though the half-glass theme is well known to a lot of people, only at that moment did I really start to think about it. Am I a glass half empty or glass half full kind of person?

For a long time, I always thought that I was somewhere in between, because some days the glass seems half full for me, and some days the glass seems half empty. Some days nothing is good enough and some days everything is fine. Because of the nature of my job, I am both a creative type and a salesman. Angst seems to be a good catalyst for creativity, while a positive attitude is one of the best tools of a salesman.

As the years went on, I've since approached the question differently. I no longer depend on the glass of water being there, waiting for me to make a choice. Now, I think about how to make a glass of water appear out of nowhere. I think about how to make other things appear out of nowhere. When presented with a half-poured glass of water, I should like to be able to represent with a bar of gold.

Why do I do this? Because there are too many moments in life where it seems as if all the available choices suck. There are too many moments where no matter what choice I make, I'm going to hate myself for making it.

And so I choose not to choose from the available choices. I choose to create my own choices. I choose to write an essay instead of simply filling in A,B,C or D with a #2 pencil.

My direction is made up of many leaps of faith, guided by instinct and a careful ear to what the universe is trying to tell me. To do otherwise would be to confine myself to a glass container partially filled with water. Sometimes I am thirsty for other things. Sometimes I am not thirsty at all.

Indra's Net

What if:

One day, we get a very short message from outer space, coming from a planet a million light years away. They tell us that they are building a virtual pipeline in space that will allow them to tap into our Internet, fluently translating our languages, images, and sounds. They would like to learn more about us. They would like to know who we are and what we're about. Because they are so far away, we will never deal with them directly, nor will we ever trade or conduct commerce with them.

But their only access to us is the Internet. And in one year from now, they will be finished with their pipeline. In one year, they will be able to view every bit of information that exists on our Internet. One year from now.

Knowing this, are we the type of civilization to change what is currently on our Internet? Will we spend the next year putting on a more favorable face for another civilization to see? How much effort will we spend to make ourselves look better? Will we resort to lying about how we really are?

And if yes to any of the above questions, why aren't we doing this now?

Finite and Infinite

While organizing my e-mails I ran into this memo that I sent to myself:


Life is infinite. Death is finite.

If we limit ourselves, we become finite; we die. If we limit ourselves every day, every day we become finite. Every day we die.

If we limit ourselves to finite measurements (money, status, etc.), we consign ourselves to specific episodes of death. If we regard ourselves as unlimited, infinite, we free ourselves to live.