Friday, March 17, 2006

imagine. . .

Imagine living in a world where each day you wake up to a new experience and worldview.

Imagine waking up each day in a new body, with new memories while retaining the old.

Imagine waking up and knowing that the decisions you make that day will affect forever the body you inhabit but you won’t be there the next day to see what the consequences will be.

Imagine waking up each day in a new body realizing that you'll have to deal with the consequences of the decisions the person who inhabited the body you are in the day before made.

Imagine waking up each day to speaking a different language and interpreting everything around you through a set of different lenses.

What would you do? Would you live differently? Would the decisions you make be considered more carefully?

Lately, I've been thinking about our human nature, how we tend to look at everything we do and the results from the stand point of "us". All our decisions are almost always made within the context of how the results will affect us, directly or indirectly. Even when we do good it's often tied to what I call a "reward stimulant," i.e., we partly do it for the afterglow of feeling good about ourselves for a good deed done. I'm not saying this is a good or bad thing. It's just something I, and I know tons of others, have observed about humanity.

So what's the point? No point. Just an observation.

I'll have points about other things very soon.

2 comments:

Dynamite Soul said...

Yeah. It is my philosophy that there is no such thing as selfless act. I debated this with a friend, and then they said they were going to just do something with nothing to gain.

I said sure you do, you will prove your point. To which I was given the "I'm gonna strangle you!" look!

It is not a bad thing. I think it is all about the intention behind the action. Not so much the verbal or written intention, but the intention of the heart.

If I were a contractor, I would love to get govt. money to help rebuild New Orleans and it's people. The reality is, if I don't treat the victims with love and respect, and if I don't use my position to lift them up, I will just be there to juice the money. My ends will reflect my intentions.

Anonymous said...

Wow! Your thoughts in paragraph 3 & 4 are seriously powerful!

I think it's easier for us to consciously make bad choices when we know (or believe rather) that it'll only hurt ourselves. We decide the immediate benefits will outweigh the ultimate cost/pain we'll experience later.

But most of us wouldn't want to put that cost on others.

Why is that - that we'll accept the worst treatment for ourselves?

Thank you for expanding my imagination for today.

I'm going to try making choices in the realm of Imagine #3 this week ... wish me luck!