Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Rule Of One & Becoming An Explorer of the World

I  related to this article quite a bit .  Being an explorer with love is the only way IMHO to live a complete life. My own recommendations are what I call following the rule of One.

MY RULE OF ONE

  • Learn atleast 1 new thing a day (expand your world)
  • Teach someone atleast 1 new thing (expand the world of another)
  • Express your love to 1 person at least once a day (connect deeply with another)
  • Find a way to express gratitude atleast 1 time a day (being grateful in every possible way)
  • Contribute to 1 person’s life everyday (this IMHO is one’s true legacy)
  • Meditate on death 1 time a day (impermenance, void and spirtuality merge with this)

This rule of one has had a profound effect on my Life in the last two years. Am curious about your thoughts, and how you may build your own rule of one. 

Go ahead read this wonderful article by Maria Popova that I found via BrainPickings.

How to Be an Explorer of the World

by 

“Every morning when we wake up, we have twenty-four brand-new hours to live. What a precious gift!”

As a longtime fan of guerrilla artist and illustrator Keri Smith’Wreck This Box set of interactive journals, part of these 7 favorite activity books for grown-ups, I was delighted to discover her How to Be an Explorer of the World: Portable Life Museum (public library) — a wonderful compendium of 59 ideas for how to get creatively unstuck by engaging with everyday objects and your surroundings in novel ways. From mapping found sounds to learning the language of trees to turning time observation into art, these playful and poetic micro-projects aren’t just a simple creativity booster — they’re potent training for what Buddhism would call “living from presence” and inhabiting your life more fully.

It all began with this simple list, which Smith scribbled on a piece of paper in the middle a sleepless night in 2007:

Eventually, it became the book.

Smith says of the book’s curious choice of subtitle:

I am interested in the idea of taking art (or museum shows/collections) out of the realm of ‘institution’ and into the hands of the individual, one does not need a formal space to put things in, in order for it to be valid. A museum is what YOU make it. You decide what goes in it, what is interesting, why it is interesting, how it could be displayed. It gives the reader permission to create their own portable (or not portable) show. It doesn’t have to be a public show either, it could just be your own private collections of whatever YOU find interesting. Think of it as a kind of “Sim Museum”, except in the real world. The book begins with ideas about what and how to collect things you find in the world (found objects, thoughts, ideas, stories, things from nature, etc.), a section on various ways of displaying the things you collect, and how to set up a showing.

Especially delightful — and not only because of the Anaïs Nin reference — is this author’s note in the preface, a nod to Mark Twain’s conviction that “all ideas are second-hand” and Henry Miller’s contention that most of what we create is composed of “hand-me-down ideas”:

Alongside the micro-projects are hand-written quotes by great creative minds of yore, including Brain Pickings favorites Italo CalvinoThich Nhat Hanh, andCorita Kent:

Both daring and meditative, How to Be an Explorer of the World is part Maira Kalman, part Wendy MacNaughton, part its very own kind of whimsy, delivering — beautifully — exactly what it says on the tin, with an invitation to be just a little bit more alive each day.

Spread photos via Geek Dad

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