Magic 8-Ball: A mind-blowing, time-bending analogy

<p>It’s time for another “Magic 8-Ball” episode! AKA, where we shake up the nearly 200 episodes we’ve released in the past two years, and the one that rises to the surface has a message that you needed to hear today.</p> <p>Have you ever heard something that felt so true that it resonated in your very bones? Even if you couldn’t explain <em>why</em> you knew it was true? You just knew.</p> <p>That’s how I felt when I read this passage from the end of Elizabeth Gilbert’s mega-bestselling book <em>Eat, Pray, Love</em>:</p> <p>“The Zen Buddhists say that an oak tree is brought into creation by two forces at the same time. Obviously, there is the acorn from which it all begins, the seed which holds all the promise and potential, which grows into the tree. Everybody can see that.</p> <p>But only a few can recognize that there is another force operating here as well—the future tree itself, which wants so badly to exist that it pulls the acorn into being, drawing the seedling forth with longing out of the void, guiding the evolution from nothingness to maturity. In this respect, say the Zens, it is the oak tree that creates the very acorn from which it was born.”</p> <p>I mean, <em>damn</em>, right?</p> <p>In this <em>clarity-on-fire-side-chat</em> (…get it?) from October 2018, Kristen and I put on our philosopher’s hats (debatable whether we ever took them off in the first place) and dove into this whole acorn/oak tree thing. We talked about:</p> <ul> <li>What is the <em>point</em> of desire? Why do we crave certain things, and not others? And what does it mean for you to want something?</li> <li>Why we believe desire isn’t random (and why wanting something might just be proof that you’re eventually going to get it—yes, you read that right).</li> <li>The relativity of time, and why the veil between the present, past, and future might be thinner than any of us realize (no big deal).</li> <li>Some mind-blowing facts about the Universe that put our itsy-bitsy problems into perspective.</li> <li>A fun exercise to help you