The power of choice
Becoming conscious of the decisions we make, especially on social media, and secrets of octopus, industries, and the future
Hi friend,
After Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg passed this past Friday, social media has blown up. While many posts were celebrating her life's work, others drew criticism on her past judgments. This points to a larger issue that is dividing our world today.
We live in a culture where many people try to measure their social impact by how critical they can be of the world. Especially on social media, we see this pronounced by accounts dedicated to call-out and cancel culture.
I, too, have been guilty of this when I focused on calling out others for not being inclusive enough, equitable enough, or perfect enough. With each angry post, I unleashed my pains to the world and was rewarded with accolades from other keyboard warriors. While it felt great, my perception of this radically shifted as I embarked on creating my social impact projects. Three significant startling discoveries:
To move the needle on social justice, it requires action. Action requires doing rather than critiquing. If everyone in the world was stuck behind a computer screen typing rants, all we get tomorrow are billions of bullies a lot of angry people. No reform. No growth. No change.
Perfection is a fallacy. The more imperfections we look for, the more we find. If we are quick to judge and dismiss the imperfect steps, we will never step foot in any direction. We become paralyzed in the present, and nothing ever changes.
Just because we feel something does not mean we have to put it out into the world. We are in full control of what we type, the things we post, and the emotions we exude.
At any given moment, we have the power to choose where we come from. Every post, comment, email, message, tweet, story, TikTok… we have the option to do it with anger or love. It's that simple. In Ginsburg's case, instead of highlighting her critiques, we could have easily written a post about other people doing amazing work where she may have missed. We can still address even the cruelest injustices against humans with love, compassion, and kindness. It just takes a bit of reframing to do so.
When in doubt, ask yourself: how might I come from love?
If we can’t put love and compassion into the world, where will it come from?
Octopus secrets
Didn’t realize how touched I would be about the journey of an octopus. A marine biologist documents his relationship with an octopus over the course of a year and shares his insights about the ocean, nature, and life. Extremely fascinating, learned so much about this fascinating animal, and the beauty of nature.
Industry secrets
Recently discovered a Reddit thread where individuals share secrets from their industries and jobs. Though I can't guarantee the validity of them, the sheer amount of upvotes and comments they get speaks for itself. Some things I learned:
Microsoft office can do transcription services for free
The majority of donations to goodwill & the library never make it to the shelves
Most of the fossils in museums are fake
Future secrets
As a part of my regular perusing of all things online, I love finding new discoveries on future technologies. Found a newsletter called Patent Drop that highlights a few patents each week to give a glimpse into our possible future. Some patents include Square’s food tracking device and Apple’s wearable gloves.
As always, thanks for reading!
P.S. If you enjoyed this, share or sign up here: mindfulmoments.substack.com
Anything else? You can always hit "reply" to email me directly. 💌
Have a beautiful day!
Metta (loving-kindness),
Steven
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