What if deja vu feels so strange because our parallel self is on a planet with a different gravitational pull and the magnetic pull we feel toward them is affected by this twinge of not-quite rightness?
When I was a kid, I came up with this theory that people just think we’re in charge of everything, but that the squirrels, birds, etc all have their own worlds with stores and homes and schools that they just keep invisible to us because we don’t understand it.
It’s one of my favorite thoughts I “made up” as a kid that I still hold dearly to. And now when I sit on the porch watching the birds chitter at each other and the squirrels run around, I think about how they’re hanging out with their friends and family, or working, or heading home. It brings my heart some joy to think of them having created their whole own world. (Though I desperately hope for their sake that squirrel-world doesn’t include a 9-5 of hunting and gathering, though now that I think about it, it probably does)
I think plants have a great deal of this magic. As you get to know them the different root structures, leaves, fruiting bodies, reproductive processes, etc. Are so magical. Life is pure magic but especially when we examine all of the variety that brought us to the same result.
The other morning I was pulling on a wooly jumper in the dark and could see the little sparks of static electricity. Even cooler than these moments of everyday wonder are the people who notice them!
I love this one so so much!!! It reflects one of my most passionate life philosophies… that the love of life is intrinsically linked to curiosity. This passage says it so well in your piece:
“The more we recognize the strange, beautiful, bizarre, and truly mystical in our lives, the more we’re noticing. The more we notice, the more we become curious, the more curious we are, the more we become compassionate, the more compassionate, the happier.”
My hope, since I can ever remember, is to learn something new everyday. Not a major challenge, but the joy in life comes from not knowing or anticipating what that new knowledge is or from where it will originate. Of course, our minds are mostly porous, so we do not remember everything we learn, but enough remains to recognize that knowledge is now in our orbit to be recognizable when it flies by again.
If I were to add anything about the wonders of life, it would be the magic of our own eyes… for example our brain processes the visual information received by the eyes, creating the perception of sight. Yes, over 80% of the brain’s processing is from our vision. So, when someone speaks to you about the “mind’s eye”, they are honestly telling you that our brain’s perception of vision is more powerful than what our eyes capture. Second; muscles in your eyes are the fastest and strongest muscles in your body, relative to their function. Every second, your eyes change focus over 50 times. And contracting in less than 1/100th of a second, the eye is the fastest contracting muscle in the body.
I do try to look others in the eye when I greet them! I don’t stare at them, but the connection can be intoxicating. Without being creepy or intimidating, I find it is so fascinating and mesmerizing! When I was much younger I was trained in NLP (The study of neurolinguistics, particularly through Neuro-Linguistic Programming) which showed how body language and verbal communication to build rapport and create a sense of connection. Of course, it is something different when you are truly gazing into the eyes of your partner in life! I have read medical studies suggest that eye-gazing can lead to the release of hormones like oxytocin and phenylethylamine, which are associated with bonding and attraction. That is why when you look into someone’s eyes you can build trust and empathy.
I had this sneaking suspicion you would love this one. I will fight tooth and nail and skin and bones forever about the power of curiosity. It's the most important trait, I stand by this. Thank you for YOURS, and for your willingness to share your wisdom with all of us. It's invaluable and I hope you feel this from all of us every day.
I loved this essay!! Magic is so real, I just think it's different than what so many people believe it is.
Also, this is a dangerous thing to say on the internet in times of so much misinformation and distrust of science, especially since I have not figured out how to properly articulate my point.... But just like you talk about magnets and how you understand WHY, it is still effing magic... I feel that science in general is magic. Like, people come up with insanely cool hypotheses and then are able to figure out ways to test and prove them?? Human minds can come up with life saving medicines and procedures that just simply DIDN'T EXIST and then poof, someone had the idea and the idea was researched and developed and then BAM we can do shit like organ transplants or create a vaccine or use a microscopic camera to see inside someone's body or we can have an ultrasound that sees through a person's abdomen, into a uterus, through amniotic fluid, through a baby's skin and muscle, to see a cross-section of the four ventricles of the baby's beating heart?!!!
Like, tell me this shit isn't absolutely magic. :D
Of course, as a supporter of science, I feel very unsure of saying "science is magic" in most groups because I fear the damage it will do to have science invalidated more than it already is..... but I feel like this is a safe space full of people with minds that will understand what I mean.
Yeah ... Deja Vu ... that glitch in the matrix. Or perhaps a butterfly effect from another dimension of us that we haven't 'seen' yet. Hop skipping out of synch for just a moment. Sometimes I remember what I was doing when I had the first image ... or in a dream? I prevented an argument once because of deja vu.
For me, it was TV and radio. The tiny performers in the box ... in there to entertain me.
Faxes [remember those?] ... images from one place magically coming through at another end?
Phones ... my visions of a voice travelling through wires and now .. the air? Magic.
The ability for a baby's laugh to make me ALWAYS smile and laugh, too. The utter abandon!
Oooh I love hearing the perspective about tv and radio from when it was still more new. This is amazing. I still think faxes are so weird and insane that they work. We share this.
What if deja vu feels so strange because our parallel self is on a planet with a different gravitational pull and the magnetic pull we feel toward them is affected by this twinge of not-quite rightness?
Also this list is wicked cool, totally rad awesomeness.
Here's to the random!
This hurt my brain, but in a good way
Brain hurts are like ice cream headaches, they feel soooooo good when they fade that they are worth it.
I LOVE THISSSSS. I have soo many theories on deja vu hahaha.
When I was a kid, I came up with this theory that people just think we’re in charge of everything, but that the squirrels, birds, etc all have their own worlds with stores and homes and schools that they just keep invisible to us because we don’t understand it.
It’s one of my favorite thoughts I “made up” as a kid that I still hold dearly to. And now when I sit on the porch watching the birds chitter at each other and the squirrels run around, I think about how they’re hanging out with their friends and family, or working, or heading home. It brings my heart some joy to think of them having created their whole own world. (Though I desperately hope for their sake that squirrel-world doesn’t include a 9-5 of hunting and gathering, though now that I think about it, it probably does)
Um, I STILL think this hahaha. I think that animals just are waiting for us to screw it up badly enough that they re-inherit the earth.
I think plants have a great deal of this magic. As you get to know them the different root structures, leaves, fruiting bodies, reproductive processes, etc. Are so magical. Life is pure magic but especially when we examine all of the variety that brought us to the same result.
Completely totally agree. I love this.
@TKG ✨
Magic in words
moving imagination
to belief
Thank you for always taking us there Brother!
Thank you my friend, for always being along for the wild ride ;)
The other morning I was pulling on a wooly jumper in the dark and could see the little sparks of static electricity. Even cooler than these moments of everyday wonder are the people who notice them!
YES KIT YES! Little lightning bolts from thin air. What a beautiful thing, what a beautiful world.
Given that it's Autumn here & Winter approaches? I think leaves changing colour is magic. Any plant that can change colour is such a gift.
And, it's pretty cool that we can tinker with the pH to make hydrangeas as pink/purple/blue as we like
Touche on all this, truly. Autumn is my soul.
As someone who gets shocked A LOT, I have to disagree with static electricity being magic. At least not good magic 🥴
The rest are spot on though
I TOO Get shocked a lot, ever since the lightning strike, it's wild. Weirdly, I really love the shocks haha.
I love this one so so much!!! It reflects one of my most passionate life philosophies… that the love of life is intrinsically linked to curiosity. This passage says it so well in your piece:
“The more we recognize the strange, beautiful, bizarre, and truly mystical in our lives, the more we’re noticing. The more we notice, the more we become curious, the more curious we are, the more we become compassionate, the more compassionate, the happier.”
My hope, since I can ever remember, is to learn something new everyday. Not a major challenge, but the joy in life comes from not knowing or anticipating what that new knowledge is or from where it will originate. Of course, our minds are mostly porous, so we do not remember everything we learn, but enough remains to recognize that knowledge is now in our orbit to be recognizable when it flies by again.
If I were to add anything about the wonders of life, it would be the magic of our own eyes… for example our brain processes the visual information received by the eyes, creating the perception of sight. Yes, over 80% of the brain’s processing is from our vision. So, when someone speaks to you about the “mind’s eye”, they are honestly telling you that our brain’s perception of vision is more powerful than what our eyes capture. Second; muscles in your eyes are the fastest and strongest muscles in your body, relative to their function. Every second, your eyes change focus over 50 times. And contracting in less than 1/100th of a second, the eye is the fastest contracting muscle in the body.
I do try to look others in the eye when I greet them! I don’t stare at them, but the connection can be intoxicating. Without being creepy or intimidating, I find it is so fascinating and mesmerizing! When I was much younger I was trained in NLP (The study of neurolinguistics, particularly through Neuro-Linguistic Programming) which showed how body language and verbal communication to build rapport and create a sense of connection. Of course, it is something different when you are truly gazing into the eyes of your partner in life! I have read medical studies suggest that eye-gazing can lead to the release of hormones like oxytocin and phenylethylamine, which are associated with bonding and attraction. That is why when you look into someone’s eyes you can build trust and empathy.
Two haikus to celebrate this one:
What joy each day brings!
So curious at first light.
Life sustained with hope.
Lovely what I see
when I gaze into your eyes!
Drawn like air to fire.
I had this sneaking suspicion you would love this one. I will fight tooth and nail and skin and bones forever about the power of curiosity. It's the most important trait, I stand by this. Thank you for YOURS, and for your willingness to share your wisdom with all of us. It's invaluable and I hope you feel this from all of us every day.
I loved this essay!! Magic is so real, I just think it's different than what so many people believe it is.
Also, this is a dangerous thing to say on the internet in times of so much misinformation and distrust of science, especially since I have not figured out how to properly articulate my point.... But just like you talk about magnets and how you understand WHY, it is still effing magic... I feel that science in general is magic. Like, people come up with insanely cool hypotheses and then are able to figure out ways to test and prove them?? Human minds can come up with life saving medicines and procedures that just simply DIDN'T EXIST and then poof, someone had the idea and the idea was researched and developed and then BAM we can do shit like organ transplants or create a vaccine or use a microscopic camera to see inside someone's body or we can have an ultrasound that sees through a person's abdomen, into a uterus, through amniotic fluid, through a baby's skin and muscle, to see a cross-section of the four ventricles of the baby's beating heart?!!!
Like, tell me this shit isn't absolutely magic. :D
Of course, as a supporter of science, I feel very unsure of saying "science is magic" in most groups because I fear the damage it will do to have science invalidated more than it already is..... but I feel like this is a safe space full of people with minds that will understand what I mean.
Science IS making. Always will be. Always. :)
Yeah ... Deja Vu ... that glitch in the matrix. Or perhaps a butterfly effect from another dimension of us that we haven't 'seen' yet. Hop skipping out of synch for just a moment. Sometimes I remember what I was doing when I had the first image ... or in a dream? I prevented an argument once because of deja vu.
For me, it was TV and radio. The tiny performers in the box ... in there to entertain me.
Faxes [remember those?] ... images from one place magically coming through at another end?
Phones ... my visions of a voice travelling through wires and now .. the air? Magic.
The ability for a baby's laugh to make me ALWAYS smile and laugh, too. The utter abandon!
Fireflies ... nature's sparklers. :-)
Oooh I love hearing the perspective about tv and radio from when it was still more new. This is amazing. I still think faxes are so weird and insane that they work. We share this.