Wisdom from youtube today:

Signs of Enlightenment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQrhl7KJ0m4

• It is not possible to discern enlightenment in people unless we sit and listen to them. i.e.: Enlightenment is a dynamic filter. Focused movement and interaction lights up enlightened minds in a way that others can see by cutting directly to the truth.
• It is important not to mistake memory for intelligence. Our society regularly confuses this concept. Intelligence is a process – a way of processing data, not a collection of facts.

About Adventure Movies: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MtMdAmoZK4 (long)

• Adventure is a Good of First Intent. We don’t need plot elements to convince us of the necessity of adventure. One reason Jurassic Park was a great adventure movie was the people didn’t have to be convinced to be there. They wanted to be there, drawing us along for the ride.
• In a true adventure, monsters are meant to be understood and respected, not defeated. Again, Jurassic Park met this requirement by not making it about defeating the dinosaurs, but rather about surviving while learning. The true enemies in that movie were the people/ideas trying to destroy the adventure.

Synthesized thoughts:

• The main reason I enjoy coding is the constant sense of adventure. I often drop projects when most of the adventure has been mined out of them.
• The main reason I enjoy acting is the movement into fear. The butterflies before a performance are energizing. Acting involves memorizing lines, but the point of acting is interpretation, not simply memorization. I was in a show recently and I noticed that every night I had something new to try, new to give. I love to recite monologues because I get to think about the character and what the words mean for them. Showing these interpretations to others is a risky endeavor!

People worry endlessly about developing creativity and productivity, as if these things aren’t already built into us from birth. We fret about fear and procrastination as if these were defects to eliminate and not signals from a perfectly functioning mind. The point of life is adventure and enlightenment. Children understand this on day one, only to have this sense gradually covered over by a wave of rules-training and domestication. As adults, the wise inner child remains with a few limited means of communicating, but these can be useful if we pay attention:

• Procrastination is telling you that your priorities are out of order.
• Fear of failure is telling you that expansion is at hand.

If you want to, you can use these signals to make brave choices and break out of the mold that has been layered over you.