Each new day brings... opportunity, possibility and enjoyment... what else?
Well, I regularly speak with Fouroboros, and have spoken to some other great bloggers, but this morning I installed Skype and had a 2 hour conversation with Fouro and Johnnie Moore... wow, if you ever get a chance to chat with either one of them, DO IT!! They are even more interesting "in person".
A quick rundown of the topics covered:
- Coffee Drinking
- Relationships
- Change
- ball juggling (don't ask)
- Fixing airplanes
- And more...
What a great way to spend a morning, connecting with some really fun, smart people.
I'm changed as a result of the conversation.
I've posted this elsewhere, but it fits here perfectly, so I'll add it... there is a wonderful passage in the book 'Power of Myth' by Joseph Campbell:
"Schopenhauer, in his splendid essay called "On an Apparent Intention in the Fate of the Individual," points out that when you reach an advanced age and look back over your lifetime, it can seem to have had a consistent order and plan, as though composed by some novelist.Events that when they occurred had seemed accidental and of little moment turn out to have been indispensable factors in the composition of a consistent plot. So who composed that plot? Schopenhauer suggests that just as your dreams are composed by an aspect of yourself of which your consciousness is unaware, so, too, your whole life is composed by the will within you. And just as people whom you will have met apparently by mere chance became leading agents in the structuring of your life, so, too, will you have served unknowingly as an agent, giving meaning to the lives of others, The whole thing gears together like one big symphony, with everything unconsciously structuring everything else. And Schopenhauer concludes that it is as though our lives were the features of the one great dream of a single dreamer in which all the dream characters dream, too; so that everything links to everything else, moved by the one will to life which is the universal will in nature."
"It’s a magnificent idea – an idea that appears in India in the mythic image of the Net of Indra, which is a net of gems, where at every crossing of one thread over another there is a gem reflecting all the other reflective gems. Everything arises in mutual relation to everything else, so you can’t blame anybody for anything. It is even as though there were a single intention behind it all, which always makes some kind of sense, though none of us knows what the sense might be, or has lived the life that he quite intended."
That is how I view blogging and the connections that I've made by doing it.
Jon, nice post. I had a similar "meeting of the minds," which I blogged about at Incite, with a fellow from Germany who happened to be in town. If you get the right people together, who all have similar goals and objectives, the result can provide inspiration or an actual business venture.
Posted by: Aleah | January 10, 2005 at 09:55 AM
Jon,
How does that Skyping thing work? I was going to try ti out. It's esentially VOIP from PC to PC. If up want to talk to a non-PC user there are charges that apply?
Posted by: Chuck Conway | January 10, 2005 at 11:10 AM
Aleah, thank you! It is very cool to meet people after exchanging emails and such, huh?
Chuck, yeah, it is VOIP and free from PC to PC. There are charges that apply when calling a non-PC user.
The really cool part was how easily we had a con-call. Very neat!
Jon
Posted by: Jon Strande | January 10, 2005 at 11:27 AM
I've converted to Vonage and I am sold on VOIP.
Our whole house now can make unlimited calls to the US and Canada.
Global VOIP is the next step to consider. I'll have to look into Skype.
Posted by: David St Lawrence | January 12, 2005 at 01:50 PM
David,
Yeah, I've considered switching to Vonage, I've heard great things from some friends - now you're endorsement moves me even closer!
Thank you!
Jon
Posted by: Jon Strande | January 12, 2005 at 05:14 PM
Hey, HEY!
Watch the ball-talk. This a family blog. Or is it a business blog? Or maybe a person-in-business-sharing their thoughts?
And hey , Mister -- have you been licensed to run his thing? Who have you blogged for before? Do I know them, and have they signed the Bloggers code-of-conduct®?
Seriously, Jon. If it weren't for you and other bloggers linking and commenting here and elsewhere, I'd have become a nun ages ago. So thanks!
Posted by: fouro | January 12, 2005 at 05:18 PM
Fouro - I'll go with the opressed-repressed-guy-in-business-trying-to-shake-things-up blog... how does that sound?
Well, you're welcome, but it is I who should be thanking you... and Aleah, Chuck, Chris, Mike, Johnnie, etc, etc, etc. for providing such wonderful conversations and thought provoking ideas. If you asked me a year ago if I'd get this much from blogging, I would have told you that you were crazy... but it seems that every day I'm meeting new people and learning new things!!
Jon
Posted by: Jon Strande | January 12, 2005 at 05:33 PM
Indra's Net - what a fabulous metaphor and one of my favorite images. And I love the passage from Joseph Campbell on the thread of a life as you look backwards.
There's an arabic word for it, but I can't find it anywhere. It's not unlike entelechy
another one of my favorite words. And I found an image for entelechy and the human life that is beautiful in Ship of Pearl, Coils of Time. http://www.estatevaults.com/lm/archives/000283.html. I'm thinking about using this as my post for 100 bloggers - expanded just a bit
Posted by: Jill | February 02, 2005 at 11:53 AM