Thoughts of the day
What if someone told you that you had not one, but eleven lives to live?
A comic strip by Zach Weiner explores the concept of needing seven years to master a skill (although this can largely vary, depending on the amount of effort one chooses to put in learning).
Assuming the average person will live to be 88 and will start living this ‘first life’ at age 11, that gives them eleven lives in total, or eleven shots to be great at something.
As Walt Whitman wrote in Song of Myself:
Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.)
Sometimes, the moment to start something new can be created by something external to us, such as a new job, a new house, a new town, a new person. Other times, the change can come from within. Maybe we develop a newfound interest in an activity, while we have lost our enthusiasm about something that used to push us out of bed every morning.
Changing chapters, and the change we might sometimes sense in ourselves, can signal an opportunity, as long as we embrace the multitudes we contain within us and open up to the multidimensional life that we can live.
Thank you for reading today’s Brain Food. Brain Food is a short daily newsletter that aims to make you think every day, without taking up too much of your time. If you know someone who would like it, why not forward it to them? And if you have just come across Brain Food, you can subscribe to it below:
For longer thoughts and Brain Food highlights from the archives, visit Medium.