Friday, June 5, 2009

Cool Mind Trick From Another Dimension

The next time you find yourself in a situation that you feel is less than your favorite thing (let’s say, doing any kind of paperwork, a boring meeting, waiting in slow traffic, things like that), pretend that you are an alien being who exists in some other dimension where your reality is entirely different from ours here on Earth. So now, you, the alien, are in your own dimension and you’ve gone to an amusement park where one of the rides is that you get to pop into the body of some random person on Earth and experience whatever situation they are in for 15 minutes. And here you are! Suddenly, you become aware of your new living, human body (in the other dimension, you only exist as a bunch of electrons or something) and all the cool things it can do. All the things around you would be so amazing and new. Even filling out tax forms would be such a thrill! I know you’re probably thinking, “It would have been better to pop into a different person for my 15 minutes”, but you wouldn’t think that way because you wouldn’t be comparing it to another experience.

This is something I like to do just for fun sometimes when I want to taste a different reality, but I was reminded of it the other day when Boris and I visited with our friend and fellow illustrator, Dan Dos Santos, his wife Cristina, and their two sons, Uno and Kai. Uno is about 2 and a half, and he got the most amazing happiness from helping Dan measure cups of water to make rice. For him, this was a great adventure, filled with risk and reward. That’s the kind of other-dimensional thinking that can make a person’s life so much more fun! It’s not the task you have to do, it’s how you’re thinking about it.

Whatever is going on, just think of how rare it is that you would have a chance at this very moment!

3 comments:

  1. What a nice idea for somebody that would like to see with appreciation and fascination their daily life! ^___^

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  2. What an awesome way to look at things! All too often so many of us will be concentrating so heavily on what we'll do next rather than just being in the moment and living now. It'd be scary to learn how much time of a persons life is literally wished away. It's not the end result, it's the journey itself. Thanks for such a cool idea Julie!

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