A Panda's Journey
“Live with purpose. Don’t let people or things around you get you down.”
– Albert Einstein
This world is filled with people blindly bouncing off each other – reacting to stimuli.
Then there are people who break out from reacting & are able to live with purpose.
We are here to live with purpose.
Less reacting – More responding.
With purpose.
“The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.”
— Einstein
“Those who fall in love with practice without science are like a sailor who enters a ship without a helm or a compass, and who never can be certain whither he is going.”
— Da Vinci“It has long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things.”
— Da Vinci
“The whole history of science has been the gradual realization that events do not happen in an arbitrary manner, but that they reflect a certain underlying order, which may or may not be divinely inspired.”
— Stephen Hawking“I have noticed that even those who assert that everything is predestined and that we can change nothing about it still look both ways before they cross the street.”
— Stephen Hawking
“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution.”
— Einstein“Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life’s coming attractions.”
— Einstein“Everything is energy and that’s all there is to it. Match the frequency of the reality you want and you cannot help but get that reality. It can be no other way. This is not philosophy. This is physics.”
—Einstein
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“We are shaped by our thoughts; we become what we think. When the mind is pure, joy follows like a shadow that never leaves.”
— Buddha“Nothing can harm you as much as your own thoughts unguarded.”
— Buddha
*“Thinking is easy, acting is difficult, and to put one’s thoughts into action is the most difficult thing in the world.”
— Goethe“As you think, so shall you become.”
— Bruce Lee
“The mind is the root from which all things grow if you can understand the mind, everything else is included. It’s like the root of a tree. All a tree’s fruit and flowers, branches and leaves depend on its root. If you nourish its root, a tree multiplies. If you cut its root, it dies. Those who understand the mind reach enlightenment with minimal effort.”
― Bodhidharma“The human mind is our fundamental resource.”
— John F. Kennedy“Thoughts are but dreams till their effects be tried.”
— William Shakespeare
“Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.”
— Franklin D. Roosevelt“No problem can withstand the assault of sustained thinking.”
— Voltaire“Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.”
— Steve Jobs
“Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t—you’re right.”
— Henry Ford“Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours.”
— John Locke“Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what is the good, pleasing, and perfect will of God.”
— Romans 12:2
“17 So I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking. 18 They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts. 19 Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, and they are full of greed.
20 That, however, is not the way of life you learned 21 when you heard about Christ and were taught in him in accordance with the truth that is in Jesus. 22 You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; 23 to be made new in the attitude of your minds; 24 and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.”
— Ephesians 4:17—24“The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.”
― James 5:16
“16 Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. 17 For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. 18 So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”
―2 Corinthians 4:16-18“Always aim at complete harmony of thought and word and deed. Always aim at purifying your thoughts and everything will be well.”
― Mahatma Gandhi
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One warm and sunny afternoon, hundreds of years ago outside Florence Italy, in Fiesole, Leonardo da Vinci took a walk to the hills to study and sketch flying birds. He was fascinated with bats, birds, kites and anything that could fly.
As da Vinci was studying flying birds he had the idea to combine the thought of flying birds with humans. How can they relate? He wondered, which led him to coming up with the new concept of “flying machines” for humans. Throughout his life he sketched a number of flying machines which he drew centuries ahead of the time when actual progress could be made toward making these machines.
Leonardo da Vinci’s innovative thinking helped “plant seeds” for future generations.
Let’s call this thought-exercise of da Vinci’s “Connecting the Unconnected” because that’s what he called it, haha. He wrote in one of his notebooks that he used this exercise for creative inspiration, and although he suggested others can use this method to inspire brilliant ideas, he wrote about this strategy in a mirror-image reversed script that only he could read. This was a secret sort of backward handwriting he created that you would need a mirror to read.
His innovation was evidently limitless.
In the year 1500 da Vinci discovered that sound travels in waves by using this thought-exercise. Here’s the story:
One day when he was standing near a well he noticed a stone hit the water while a bell went off in a church tower close by. He observed that the stone caused a ripple effect, making small waves until they disappeared. By focusing on the water ripples and the sound of the bell, he dwelled in how they could be connected and came to the conclusion that sound travels in waves.
Yea, wow…I guess this is what genius is.
140 years later, Marin Mersenne was the first to measure the speed of sound in air. Again, da Vinci was ahead of his time.
Einstein is also known for using a similar method of “connecting the unconnected” or “thought experiments” which is how he came up with e=mc².
“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution.”
Einstein
Einstein is also quoted with saying:
“I never came upon any of my discoveries through the process of rational thinking.”
So if you’re looking for new ideas, want to be more creative in life, or just want to overcome boredom, try connecting the unconnected. See what innovating ideas you can come up with, and you never know, they may just end up changing the world.
With Ken Thompson 