Fill your senses.
Here’s how to live: Fill your senses.
See it all.
Touch it all.
Hear it all.
Taste it all.
Do it all.
Appreciate this wonderful physical world.
If you knew you’d go blind tomorrow, how intensely would you look at the world today?
If you knew you’d go deaf tomorrow, how intensely would you listen?
Fill your senses as if this was your last day on Earth.
One day that will be true.
Maximize your inputs.
See all the places.
Eat all the food.
Hear all the music.
Meet all the people.
Kiss all the beauties.
Be insatiable.
Life is short.
How to experience it all?
Here’s the key:
Here’s your mission:
Nothing twice.
Never eat the same food twice.
Never go to the same place twice.
Never hear the same thing twice.
Everything only once.
Be systematic.
Follow guides.
“Top Places You Must Visit”
“Greatest Movies of All Time”
“Best Restaurants in Town”
Go through them all.
That’s the optimized way to experience the most, without repetition.
Always forward.
Never back.
Push yourself.
Always be a stranger in a strange land.
But don’t rush.
Savor every aspect of everything you take in.
Notice the nuances.
Find places that bombard your senses.
India.
Burning Man.
Festivals.
Museums.
Celebrations.
Funerals.
Skydive.
Scuba dive.
Run with bulls.
Swim with sharks.
Float in space.
How to pay for this wonderful life?
Only two choices.
The bad choice is a travel writer.
Looks glamorous and easy, so everyone tries it.
May be possible, but every rich kid does it for free.
The smart choice is sales.
It will always be valuable.
Learn to sell, and you can go anywhere.
You’ll be paid well at any age.
Always in high demand.
Get a job on the road.
Always talking to strangers.
That’s what you need.
Simple decisions help avoid repetition.
Don’t have a home.
Never sleep in the same place twice.
No kitchen.
No cooking.
Every meal somewhere new.
Never go down a road you recognize.
Simple systems help force change.
Every month, get rid of your existing clothes.
Get new clothes in a new style.
Do this while traveling, so one month your clothes are from Morocco, next month from Italy, next month from Japan.
This is good for you.
The variation in diet is good for your health.
The new situations are great for your brain.
Never have the same thought twice.
Keep nothing on your mind.
Just take in what’s around you now.
Have no expectation of how something should be, or you won’t see how it really is.
How amazing that everything you’re doing is both the first and last time.
The thrill of the first.
The sentimentality of the last.
There will be things you’ll love so much you’ll want to stay or do them again.
But no.
Remember your mission.
Experience pain, anger, sorrow, and more.
Don’t judge them as bad.
Notice how they really feel.
Practice seduction.
Be with a different person every night.
Every lover is different.
Don’t allow relationships.
Remember: no repetition.
But after decades of this, you’ll need something radically new.
Stay in one place.
Be with one person.
Buy a home.
Raise a baby.
It’s terrifying, but if you don’t, it will be the one experience you never had.
This chapter gave me chills! Feels like a chapter out of my life.
I am reading this and re-reading The Essential Rumi poetry book tonight, and I cannot help but hear similarities in the coolest way. In both the rhythm in each these writings, and the secret messages I am gathering from each of them. Wow!
As if I had turned into a poet.
I read this and hear an artist talking – driven by the new, eschewing the roads already travelled. That is what makes an artist an artist, a novelty seeking personality. I am one, so I know!
I am mindful of an interview with the late Barry Humphries (Dame Edna Everage), Australia’s top comedian/impersonator, not long before he died. He said there comes a time when every artist must concede that there is no longer time to read all those novels one was intending to or to visit any more destinations on the bucket list. One’s body and its declining health becomes the arbiter over choices. He added (with a wink) that he had enjoyed his life, supplying his several wives along the way with an income!
I suppose the opposite of this "ruling idea" is not repetition, but rather, going with the flow. Both ideas make for good thought experiments.
What we want changes over time. The things that we wanted in the past may not align with who we are today. What we want is also different from one another. What others want is not necessary what we want, or what serves us. It's easy to know the latter, but sometimes you have to make a mistake and then realize that what I used to do actually makes me feel terrible now. Yeah, we can always do anything we want, we can sleep and date different person like when we were younger, but does that makes me happy now? The answer for me now is no.Right now I just want to share a life with someone for the better and worse, for a journey that we sail together. Not because of the former is a wrong thing to do and the latter is the right thing to do, but it's about what serves you as who you are today.
Nothing is really bad or good, as long as it's serving you. We must have no shame of what we want which may be perceived by some people not in a good way.It is what it is. But we also have to take a deep look at what we want,at the reasons why we yearn for it. It has to be come from our own refined truth, not by the society's definition or others want us to be. Because it is so easy to want things everyone else is wanting these days, or following others. We have to think independently,truly independently of what we want and go on that path ourselves, even no one else is doing it.
and in the end you discover it was an illusion, just chasing the same carrot with a different package.
...maybe?
Sounds quite hedonic. The true adventure only starts at the level of intellect, never at the level of senses. It's a path to misery.
Hi there Derek,
Your quote: “Have no expectation of how something should be, or you won’t see how it really is”.
Yes, this is so important. A lot of times this happens because of interpretations. And so, interpretations lead to expectations, and that can cause a lot of problems.
This is a not-so-easy to understand article but, thanks for sharing.