This year, I will slow down. I will remember how the holidays felt when I was a child—when the table was full, and so was my heart.
I will call my mom just to hear her voice.
I will tell my friends how much they mean to me.
I will say yes to new faces and new conversations, because I know that’s how the best stories begin.
This year, I will look up from my phone.
I will sit at a table with strangers, and I will let them feel like family.
I will choose presence over business, connection over comfort zones.
And maybe, next year, I’ll meet people who remind me of home, even if I’m far from it.
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I am sitting in a quiet coffee shop, just outside Leh. Alone. I order a black coffee. I have been drinking black coffee for seventeen years now. It’s good for weight loss, they say. I am 45 now. And I weigh almost the same as I used to weigh seventeen years ago. It’s the caffeinated hope that I am addicted to. Will someone be joining you, the waiter asks. I hope not, I reply. I chuckle sadly before going back to the book that I had been reading. Nowadays, I can’t leave myself alone with my thoughts. Things could go terribly wrong. I need my mind to be distracted. Always.
I have been living one day at a time for as long as I can remember. Just focus on the present, things will be fine. Things never turned out to be fine. They were far from fine. They still are so, so far from fine. But now I don’t complain. I have complained enough and I am tired now. It doesn’t solve anything. When you fall into the abyss for long enough, you realise that there is no point in screaming. The book I am reading is about this girl who traveled to a small island in Italy in her early 20s and then never returned. Nobody knows where she is, but she keeps sending letters to let everyone know that she is alive. She has no explanation for why she planned to settle there. It just felt like the right thing to do, she said in one of her letters. I think towards the end of the book she will stop sending these letters. I hope she does.
Have you ever felt that your whole life has passed by right in front of your eyes? Like you remember every second, every minute, every day, of the years that have gone by? And you are tired and you don’t want to watch it but you can’t help it so you just keep on watching. And some days your eyes are so wide open that you start seeing the future. The things that are gonna happen. All the unexciting events that are gonna unravel. And you know that it’s all gonna be true and you are already tired of them without actually living them. So all you gotta do is wait. Wait till all of it passes.
I am in a meeting now. It’s a posh office in Bandra. The kind of office where they value their plants more than their interns. I had a very bad morning. I woke up feeling breathless, so I just sat on my bed for two hours. Doing nothing. I have been having these kinds of mornings for quite a while. I should consult with a doctor. I am 36 now. My colleague called and told me that I was late for the meeting. He sounded kind of pissed. I didn’t care. I made my coffee and headed for the meeting. “What do you think about this?”, someone asks me. I stare at them for a while. “Do you like this?”, they ask back. Suddenly it strikes me. I don’t like this. I don’t like any of this. I walk out of the meeting. And then the city. And then the country. I am done, I tell myself, knowing perfectly well that I am not. I am far from done. I live in a different country for a couple of years. I come back, an unchanged man. Who was I running away from, anyway?
What’s the meaning of it all? I ask a friend at 3 a.m. We are both in our twenties. He smiles and goes to pee. I continue watching the TV. He comes back and tells me that I shouldn’t worry about the meaning of it all. Maybe the answer is in the search. I nod. Or maybe the meaning is so simple that we are unable to grasp it, he continues. You are drunk, I tell him. Or maybe, there is no meaning. We continue living till we die. Maybe we are too small to comprehend all of this. Or too insignificant. Okay, you definitely need to sleep. He nods off. I go to the kitchen to make myself some coffee. There is no milk. So I make myself a cup of black coffee for the first time.
It’s 6 pm and the sun is about to set. The waiter comes back with another coffee. I am almost done with my book. The girl indeed stops sending the letters. I hope she is happy. I finish my book and start walking towards my room. It’s unusually quiet today. I buy some apples on my way. Black coffee and red apples. That’s my diet nowadays. I haven’t felt breathless in more than five years. It cured itself. I enter my hotel room. I shut the door. I watch some more of this life pass by.
my grandmother who never had a phone or internet always seemed busy. she gardened and made intricate flower arrangements. she sat on her porch and watched birds at the feeder and hosted friends for lunch.
i grew up with all my relationships at the palm of my hands, using tools that promised to keep me close to those i knew.
i wonder which one of us was more connected.
What are blue zones?
In association with National Geographic and with funding from the National Institute on Aging, Dan Buettner and a team of demographers studied census data and identified five pockets where people are living verifiably longer lives by a number of measurements (Ikaria, Greece; Loma Linda, California; Nicoya, Costa Rica; Okinawa, Japan; Sardinia, Italy). A team of experts then tried to determine why people had such remarkable longevity in these areas, which were dubbed “blue zones.” A few of their findings included:
Move Naturally The world's longest-lived people do not “exercise.” In blue zones, Buettner's team observed that people were nudged into moving about every 20 minutes. For example, they were gardening, they kneaded their own bread, and they used hand-operated tools.
Purpose In the blue zones, people have vocabulary for purpose. Buettner described a recent study from Canada that followed 6,000 people for 14 years and found that those people who could articulate their sense of purpose had a 15 percent lower risk of dying.
Loved Ones First Centenarians spend a lot of time and effort working on their relationships with their spouses and children. Children are likely to keep their aging parents nearby and to consider them to be fonts of wisdom that will favor their own survival.
Right Tribe Health behaviors are contagious, Buettner said. Deleterious behaviors (e.g., obesity, smoking, excessive drinking, loneliness, unhappiness) are also contagious. They world's longest-lived people “curate” social circles around themselves that support healthy behaviors.
Social structure in blue zones turned out to be most important for longevity. In Sardinia, a cultural attitude that celebrated the elderly kept them engaged in the community and in extended-family homes until they were in their 100s. A sense of belonging and purpose, along with close engagement with friends, family, and community may be the key for such increased longevity.
From Dan Buettner and Business Engagement in Building Healthy Communities
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#exploreserendipity #choosechance #bluezone #Travel
How NASA made calculations before computers:
“Back in the heyday of NASA and the space race, electronic calculators had yet to be invented. This meant that everything had to be done by hand, including all of the calculations necessary to send a man to the moon.”
“After all of the physics were worked out, every line of code needed to control the shuttle was loaded onto a computer with 64 Kbyte of memory and operated at 0.043MHz. That is .000064 GB of storage.
In fact, the Apollo 11 mission “was achieved with less computing power than a cell phone”.”
“Beginning in 1935, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), a precursor of NASA, hired hundreds of women as computers. The job title designated someone who performed mathematical equations and calculations by hand. The computers worked at the Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory in Virginia.”
“Human computers were not a new concept. In the late 19th and early 20th century, female “computers” analyzed star photos to learn more about their basic properties. These women made discoveries still fundamental to astronomy today. For example: Williamina Fleming is best known for classifying stars based on their temperature, and Annie Jump Cannon developed a stellar classification system still used today.”
Mary Jackson worked as a computer with West Area Computing section. “She was involved with wind tunnels and flight experiments. Her job was to extract the relevant data from experiments and flight tests. She also tried to help other women advance in their career, according to the biography, by advising them on what educational opportunities to pursue. “
“The work at the hands of these women were better than the work that a mechanical computer systems were able to perform, and were the equal to todays software operations. The women at NASA working on this project found the hidden figures that were needed to make this a success.”
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Nikon’s 2023 marketing campaign encouraging people to not 'give up on the real world', and fight back against Artificial Intelligence (AI) generated creations.
Created with advertising agency Circus Grey Peru, the company says the campaign serves as a reminder that 'our world is full of natural beauty that is often much more incredible than any AI generated photo.'
The print and outdoor campaign cleverly shows photos of genuine natural places that are stranger than fiction, captured by photographers using Nikon cameras.
"Photographers used keyword prompts from artificial intelligence websites, demonstrating that photography and nature are truly capable of surprising us, beyond our imagination," Nikon says.
"Nikon has an important commitment to all the photographers in the world, who, with their talent and art, allowed us to enjoy the most beautiful and amazing images, which is why it was so important for us to take the initiative and support what has always given us a purpose as a brand, photography.” said Charlie Tolmos, chief creative officer of Circus Grey Peru.
The campaign launches at a time when individuals and brands are beginning to turn to AI generation tools to create imagery, at the cost of hiring real photographers and creatives.
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#choosechance #aiphotography #nikon #photography #222
