⚡️ Enlightening Bolts

⏰ What is Deferred Happiness Syndrome? Why our obsession with productivity is all wrong. Watch it here.

🎨 On Creative Weariness: A thoughtful reflection on maintaining creativity and resilience in the face of inevitable exhaustion and loss of inspiration. Read it here.

🤯 Wavelength: A telepathic party game. Try it here.

🎇 Image of The Week

On Saturday, May 18, 2024, a dazzling meteor lit up the night skies above Spain and Portugal. The amazing spectacle took place at approximately 11:45 p.m. local time, and thousands of people from all around the region saw it. It was captured on video from various angles. The most stunning of which is depicted in the screenshot above. It’s jaw-dropping and hard to believe it’s not CGI. But it’s real. See it here.

🕵️‍♂️ You Imposter

When venturing into territory outside of your comfort zone, it's not uncommon to feel like an imposter.

"Who am I to be doing this?" is the question that rings in the ears of so many people on the cusp of a new beginning.

It's so easy to see supreme confidence and competence in those you admire while minimizing your own ability.

Here's the thing: the people you admire were once exactly where you are.

So please, don't let the dreaded "imposter syndrome" keep you from trying something new.

Embrace it. Understand that feeling like an imposter does not mean you're lacking something. It does not mean you should not keep going.

It can be a GOOD sign.

It means you see many ways you can improve.

Of course, seeing how you could be better can feel overwhelming and daunting.

But when you accept you don't need to be perfect, you instead experience the imposter's gift: you see the details that lead to a path of greater mastery.

You have ample material to slowly hone your craft and refine your skills.

Imposters grow more than self-perceived know-it-alls.

Embrace it.

 ✨ Poetic Wonder

Enjoy this reflection from author Dennis Quinn:

“The poet says to us: Here it is. He presents it as a gift. This is the mourner, the lover, the moon, the smile, the soldier, the ship, the horse. Part of the wonder of poetry is that it does give us things in the present, puts us in their presence; for things have about them a presence, a certain inner quality that we glimpse but seldom and fleetingly. The knowledge that we have at this level we cannot express by any means except imitation: we represent the purring and miaowing, the stealth and the spring and pounce of the cat in pantomime or gesture and by comparisons, metaphor. The poet really says very little; something like "Look at that!" The looking involves seeing with our imagination and memory. Or the poet says, "It is like that!" in which case we see the likeness, All the devices of poetry are efforts to get at the mystery of what things are, but the mystery of the particular thing, which is the quintessence of natural reality, is impenetrable and infinite,

Thus in poetry we never emerge from wonder; the poet immerses us in his own wonder at the mystery he sees, and in the process the poem itself participates in the mystery and itself becomes a dark reflection of dim shadow. We can no more "explain" the poem than the poet can "explain" the thing he sees.

What often comes to us in the poem is a realization that we do not know, and the poet is always telling us to look again-take a fresh view, see with new eyes. Hence the poem often leaves us in deeper ignorance and greater wonder than when we started.”

🤓 Learn This Word

Verbicide: the willful distortion or depreciation of the original meaning of a word.

⏳ From The Archives

A hand-picked classic HighExistence article.

What if Money Were No Object? — Alan Watts on the Meaning of (Your) Life

By Beth MacDonald

My dear readers, please, by the suggestion of Alan Watts take a moment to ask yourself:

“What do I desire?”

Think about this deeply now.

Take the time to listen to the entirety of Watts’ famous 3-minute “What would you like to do if money were no object?” monologue while pondering what you truly desire, then keep reading:

Is it love? Is it success? How about experience? Or happiness?

In attempt to answer this question, you may have found yourself constantly running into mental obstacles formed as more questions such as: What about money? What about love? What about time? What about everything that is expected of me?

There are just too many detours along the road to desire, most of them dead ends. With such an expansive question, rigged with stock answers by society, your answer may look something like:

[Continue Reading]

🎬 Endnote

I hope you enjoyed this issue of Down The Rabbit Hole. Feel free to reply and tell me what you think.

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With Wonder,

Mike Slavin