Albert Einstein famously remarked in a conversation with Werner Heisenberg, he said: “You know in the West we’ve built a beautiful ship and in it, it has all the comforts, but actually the one thing it doesn’t have is a compass and that’s why it doesn’t know where it’s going”.
This paradox of our time was propounded by the Dalai Lama when he said we have wider freeways but narrower viewpoints, we have taller buildings but shorter tempers. Will Smith said that we spend money we haven’t earned on things we don’t need to impress people we don’t like, and it’s phenomenal how the same technology that brings us closer to those that are far away and take us take us far away from the people that are actually close.
30 billion Whatsapp messages are sent per day but 48% of people will say that they feel lonely and in general the paradox of our times is that we have more degrees but less sense, more knowledge but less judgment, more experts but fewer solutions.
It was Martin Luther King who said that the irony of our time is that we have guided missiles but misguided men. Have you ever found it perplexing that we’ve been all the way to the moon and back but we struggle to start a conversation across the road or across the train? It’s amazing that Bill Gates was known as the top earner in 2015 with a wealth of 79.2 billion, but one in four CEOs claim to be struggling with depression, and do we actually thrive from this paradox or something? Is it that this paradox actually makes the media interesting, or it’s what makes journalism interesting, or what makes politics interesting, or what makes television interesting?
Is this paradox what we feed off and what we live off and what we talked about and discussed in our circles? Doesn’t it seem like we’ve tried to clean the air but polluted our soul? Like we’ve split the atom but not our prejudice? And like we are aiming for higher income but we have no morals? So I'm hearing you ask, “How do we bring a change, how do we dissect this paradox that exists in our lives and it starts by each of us pressing pause, pressing reset and then pressing play again, taking a moment to become more conscious, taking a moment to be more aware, taking a moment to really reflect on the consequences, the implications of a misplaced word, of an unnecessary argument that we all know we didn't need to have or to speak to someone just slightly differently, in a different tone, in a different voice, in a different empathy with a different perspective, just to connect with people on a different level.
This thinking out loud started from Robert Einstein, and I’ll track back to him when he said that the problems we have today can’t be solved by the same thinking we used when we once created them. So we need to research alternative teachings; we need to deep down, dig into those ancient books of wisdom. We need to go back into understanding if there is anything written in those creased pages of time that can actually reveal more knowledge and more wisdom on how we can transform our experience of lives today, otherwise, this paradox means that every step forward we take, we are taking three steps backward every time.
I really want you to get involved in this conversation as we think together about our minds in this world. So please share in the reply section, I look forward to you joining me.