One Apple A Day #1149

New eyes

Bright “open” neon in the window of a Chinese restaurant. Original public domain image from Wikimedia Commons

Yesterday I found an old note I wrote in 2011, after a day walking around New York City.

Walking around NYC, among a non-stop sequence of shop windows selling things alternating with shop windows selling food, I was reminded of Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse. And his idea of fasting, of being able to give up everything to have everything.

I don't remember writing these words eleven years ago. 

My life was so different back then, and I was too.

I often underestimate how much we can change in ten years.

However, it struck me that while Subtraction - both as a book and as an innovation philosophy - was still far from manifesting, its seeds were already there.

I just couldn't see them back then. 

Now, if I look back and connect all the dots, I can see that life has been showing me the way of Subtraction for a long time.

My path was there before me. I just needed new eyes to see it.

I want to close this post with the quote I wrote at the end of that little note. An excerpt from Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse.

"And all the voices, all the goals, all the yearnings, all the sorrows, all the pleasures, all the good and evil, all of them together was the world. All of them together was the stream of events, the music of life."