One of the things a sabbatical does is make me go right back to basics and the basic philosophical tenets of my life.
One of the things I’ve done over the past 10 years is really explore the concept of happiness and my own happiness and whether I do enough to seek that out and nurture that as best as I can.
And so, with that in mind there are two experiments that I’ve identified at least 10 years apart which you might want to use at this time of year to see whether you're in the right place.
Feel free to do them and to talk to other people about them and to share them or to not do them at all.
1)The deep pile carpetImagine you walk into a room full of people sitting on benches with an isle down the middle.
The room is beautifully decorated with a deep pile carpet and everybody is sat facing away from you looking towards the front of the room.
They’re all well dressed and seem upset.
The closer you get to the front of the room, the further down the benches, the more upset the people become.
Interestingly the closer you get to the front of the room, the better you know the people and the more you care about them and the more closely you’re related to them.
The people at the front of the room are quite upset.
At the front of the room there’s a raised platform and on it is a box, beside that box is the person most precious to you in the world.
You step onto the platform and you look in the box and you're in the box and the person beside the box says “here is Colin, in his life he was…” fill in the missing words.
2)You’re standing at the platform of a futuristic railway beside a little capsule for 1 person with a seat in it that looks like a chrome egg.There is a scientist beside you in a white coat with a clipboard.
The scientist is explaining the experiment you signed up for where you will soon sit in the seat in the chrome egg which will transfer you to 75 different platforms over the next 75 days.
The egg has been designed so that you cannot perceive any movement when it moved from platform to platform and at each platform will be a different and wonderful or terrible experience that you will encounter over 75 days.
There is a single button within the capsule which allows you to advance to the next day at any point if you don’t like what you’re experiencing, or you’d rather get to the next day faster.
It’s time to sit in the capsule.
The scientist says “is it 75 days or is it 75 years I can’t quite remember? Never mind it will pass in a flash”. You better say farewell and tell her you’ll see her on the other side and as you sit in there, she explains that she won’t see you on the other side because on the other side you die.
The door shuts.
What will you do with that button and how many times will you press it regardless of how good or how bad the experiences are at each platform?
If it’s 75 days or 75 years wouldn’t you like them to last the longest possible time?
Wouldn’t you like to drink them in, every last detail, all the good and all the bad, all the beautiful and all the terrible?
How would you like to spend 2022?
Good luck!
Blog Post Number - 2979