Biologists have managed to look at ever smaller and smaller things. And astronomers have looked further and further… into the dark night sky, back in time and out in space.
But maybe the most mysterious of all… Is neither the small nor the large. It’s us, up close.
Could we even recognize ourselves? And if we did, would we know ourselves? What would we say to ourselves? What would we learn from ourselves? What would we really like to see… if we could stand outside ourselves… and look at us?
Here I am, one year older. And here are some of you, creating a story in my timeline about this event. Thank you all, it was great to receive your wishes in person, via Facebook and email! May we all be happy, well and peaceful.
Jim Braddock’s rise from the soup lines… to number one heavyweight contender has truly been miraculous. - NBC Box Commentator (Baer vs. Braddock match)
Photo: Max Baer vs Jim Braddock in 1935
James Braddock was born in 1905. He started boxing early. At the age of 21 he turned pro, fighting as a light heavyweight and in just three years, he scored 21 knockouts.
In 1928, he lost to Tommy Loughranbadly and fractured his right hand in several places. His performance and disposition suffered, his record fell.
In 1929, a severe economic depression spread worldwide. The history named it: The great depression. Millions fell into poverty. Braddock’s family wasn’t sparred. He had to give up boxing and worked as a longshoreman. He had to accept government relief money to survive.
He eventually restarted his boxing career. He defeated a highly regarded heavyweight contender, Art Lasky, and he was given a title fight against the World Heavyweight Champion, Max Baer.
He worked hard: “I’m training for a fight. Not a boxing contest or a clownin’ contest or a dance. Whether it goes 1 round or 3 rounds or 10 rounds, it will be a fight and a fight all the way. When you’ve been through what I’ve had to face in the last two years, a Max Baer or a Bengal tiger looks like a house pet. He might come at me with a cannon and a blackjack and he would still be a picnic compared to what I’ve had to face.”
Braddock defeated Baer. For the boxing commentator, Braddock’s actions may have appeared as a “miraculous rise”. For many boxing wannabes and boxing coaches Braddock’s actions might appear as the recipe to success.
But which of the excellent boxers cares about rising miraculously? Which of them cares about success recipes? An excellent boxer cares about boxing, period.
Focus on doing what you do. Train for the fight rather than success.
PS: Watch Cinderella Man, if you’re interested in Braddock’s story.
I’ve been online for over 12 years now and this medium never ceases to offer me new things to learn.
I am a huge fan of music and the Internet enabled me to discover amazing new artists. Today I stumbled across a song by Young Galaxy which is a Canadian indie rock / dream pop band. You can listen it over here.
Young Galaxy
The fact that I could enjoy the music of Young Galaxy today, in the comfort of my room reminds me that we live in extraordinary times. We have tools that enable self expression like never before and distribution channels that enable us to reach to audiences across the globe again, like never before.
I love people that have thoughts of their own, people that create. We are intelligent in our own way and we create on our own way. Please don’t say that you have nothing to say. Gather yourself, create and share with the world. People are waiting to be amazed.
That’s what the YDN team is going to do on 14th and 15th May in Bucharest. Anil, the Programme Manager for the Yahoo! Developer Network just shared with me that Open Hack is coming to Bucharest.
If you’re not familiar with Open Hack, it’s a 2 days event where developers and designers gather to build great stuff. You can learn more about the event over here.
It’s a great opportunity to mingle and build cool stuff along with cool people - don’t miss out, ok?
Lotus flowers grow along lakes and rivers in wet soil. It is nearly impossible for a lotus to survive in deserts or in a harsh cold environment such as the arctic tundra.
Just like a lotus flower needs wet soil to develop, a musical mind needs to be fed with sound and rhythm to flourish. All minds are sensitive to music but some minds are more sensitive than others. That’s why not everyone can excel at DJing, piano playing or singing.
Have you ever asked yourself what kind of food does your mind need in order to flourish?
This is a simple question to answer if we look at survival. We all want to survive, right? All organisms want to survive. In order to survive, we have to eat. Hence, food is one of the things that matters to us. By eating our survival is impacted in a positive way and vice-versa.
Image credits: Sam Gross
There are many other things that matter to our survival, obviously. What I wanted to highlight with the help of this example is that something that matters is something (food) that impacts a fundamental outcome (survival) in a positive way.
Now that we have a feeling of what “things that matter” means, why not ask a more provocative question. How do you know whether what you are doing has an impact?
To answer this question, imagine that you are a resource, let’s say: food. What would happen if food didn’t exist? We would die. Does food matter? It does.
“Be the change you want to see in the world.” Mahatma Gandhi
I’ve been travelling in Romania in the past few weeks and overheard many conversations about politics and quality of life. There are two big patterns that I observed and wanted to share.
People complain
People expect that their lives will get better only when PersonX will be president
I am especially interested to understand the second one. What follows is my simple take on it.
During communism most people couldn’t get easy access to various types of food (such as meat, milk, etc), hot water and other resources. It was the president / the state who regulated their access to these resources. I imagine that living more than a couple of years in such an environment, teaches people that they can not be responsible about some fundamental aspects about their lives anymore.
Coming back to 2011, it seems that a large number of people (mostly the ones aged over 40) think the same. Even they all have easy access to food and other basic resources they still expect the president to provide better places to live, better jobs, more money etc.
Is there anything else than willpower that will enable these people to take their lives in their own hands (i.e: be responsible)?
Consider that the orange circle in the picture below is a person. Say, Mr. Circle. All other geometric figures are people that this person admires. Even though there are similarities between these figures, everyone is unique in its own way.
“You can be anything you want to be, if you just try hard enough”. At first, Mr. Circle decides that he wants to be a star.
He tries hard but he fails. He then decides to be a square.
He tries hard but he fails. During his life he tries to be each of the figures that he admires the most.
At the end of his life, Mr. Circle is completely confused because he’s not able to say who he really is.
“You cannot be anything you want to be - but you can be a lot more of who you already are”. Trying to be anything else than what you already are, is a waste of time.
Instead of wasting your time, create great relationships with the people that you admire and kindly ask for their advice. Figure out how their advice is useful to you. Adapt. Grow. Be a bigger circle!
PS: Think of the same story when you evaluate anything external to you as “inspiring”. Instead of trying to imitate something that seems to be successful, step back and figure out how that piece of inspiration can be applied in the context of your values and strengths.
Nowadays, I hear a lot of people talking about taking the world with their businesses. I am referring especially to technology businesses. All of them get excited about the perspective that we are super connected, that information flows freely and reaching somebody at the other side of the world can be done in just a matter of seconds.
From a consumption perspective it’s easy to see why the world is flat. The Internet allows anyone to access any kind of website and other global distribution channels allow anyone to buy almost any kind of gadget no matter where it has been built.
But what about the perspective of innovation? Where is all this great technological stuff being designed? Take a look at the world map of innovation clusters. You’ll see that even though anyone can consume technology from anywhere around the world, the creation work is being done in just a few places.
The world is flat from the perspective of consumption but not from that of innovation - at least not yet (what do you think?)
