How do you choose to live your life? My dear friends, by now you know I love road trips. And the film you are about to see, is the road trip of all road trips. Besides truly stunning images, there is a voice-over that is not just talking to you. It is speaking to your heart. And it’s not just somebody speaking, it is the future! It’s real life, expressed in pure poetry. I say this often: give yourself the time. Do yourself a favor and watch this film from A to Z for it will make you feel good. The film was written, filmed and produced by Dan Riordan and his girlfriend Nina while traveling through Chile & Patagonia. They spent 5 weeks exploring this amazing country and this is how they chose to document it. What a life, what a life, what a life. And you too have an amazing life. When you document it, you will see.

When I saw ‘The beginning of Infinity’, a short film I posted a while ago, I got interested in Jason Silva. This young Venezuelan-American filmmaker, journalist and founding producer/host for Current TV, has views on human evolution that are as enthusiastic as they are interesting. He has a way of speaking and a sparkle in his eyes, that makes you want to explore life yourself. Well, it has that effect on me anyway. In this interview on Reason TV, he is asked about how new technologies such as the internet, affect human life. Silva says: “People have always sort of been scared of new technologies. “But in the end we assimilate them and they improve the quality of our lives.” I love this interview for it’s positive, energetic and to some extend hopeful message. Enjoy.

Thanks to a friend of mine, I stumbled upon a guy called Espen Fadnes, a Norwegian bass jumper. He says: “People who’ve seen me about to fly off a cliff say I look perfectly calm. It’s the complete opposite. I’m terrified. I’ve just developed techniques and methods to cope with that fear”. So, what is it like flying down a mountain at 250 km per hour? Espen – who is the world’s fastest flying human being 2010 – teamed up with project managers goovinn to communicate the experience of flying. It worked: this will blow your mind. It did blow my mind, I can tell you that. It’s a breathtaking mini movie (only 05:37!) that hopefully inspires you to face your own fears in one way or another.

The following story is classic, probably told in many cultures. I found it thanks to a friend of mine, on Paulo Coelho’s Blog. Here it goes: There was once a businessman who was sitting by the beach in a small village. As he sat, he saw a fisherman rowing a small boat towards the shore having caught quite few big fish. The businessman was impressed and asked the fisherman, “How long does it take you to catch so many fish?” The fisherman replied, “Oh, just a short while.” “Then why don’t you stay longer at sea and catch even more?” The businessman was astonished.“This is enough to feed my whole family,” the fisherman said. The businessman then asked, “So, what do you do for the rest of the day?” The fisherman replied, “Well, I usually wake up early in the morning, go out to sea and catch a few fish, then go back and play with my kids. In the afternoon, I take a nap with my wife, and evening comes, I join my buddies for a drink – we play guitar, sing and dance throughout the night.”

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I had to watch this film a couple of times to fully understand the depth of it. It’s… kind of profound. The information combined with the images that are thrown at you are impressive and, at least to me, very interesting from a philosophical point of view. The film is, in part, inspired by the ideas explored in David Deutsch’s new book: ‘The beginning of infinity’ and tells the story of how humanity is reinventing the earth and potentially the universe as a whole. The example given concerns the island of Manhattan. To be precise: the topographical shape and the material constitution of the upper surface of Manhattan, as it exists today. It is considered to be much less a matter of geology than it is of culture, science, economics, politics and human psychology. The effects of shaping the earth geological forces were trumped (you might say) by these other forces. Forces that proved themselves, in the fullness of time, physically stronger. Deutsch thinks the same thing must in the long run be true of the universe as a whole. Stuff like gravitation and dark energy are the sorts of things that determine the shape of the cosmos only in its earliest, and most parochial stages. The rest is going to be a matter of our own intentional doing. Wow. More info about the film? Click here.

Golf is a fascinating game: you have no opponent except yourself and only the perfect alignment between body and mind results in the perfect swing. Also, the difference between a great shot on the green and a whoosher off target, is often only a matter of millimeters. That’s because the angle from where you hit the ball, has a major effect on where it will land given the distance the ball is going. A millimeter more to the right or to the left, up or down results in a difference of many meters. Think about that in the context of daily life. A small change may have little effect on today or tomorrow, but over the course of many years it may be the difference between life and death. Starting or quitting smoking is such a change. You can also use this line of thought in reverse: when you completely messed up something (you hit the ball way out of the golf course) it’s likely that by changing only a small detail in your approach, you will get a much better result next time. So whenever you fail, don’t burn yourself down – see what small changes you can make.

You may know how to fly an airplane from reading a book. But it is until the moment you actually get into a plane and fly, that you’ll find out whether you really can. You may know everything there is to know about wine. But it is until the moment that you taste it, that you’ll find out whether you even like it or not. You may be an expert on Johannes Sebastian Bach, but without having heard his music, what do you really know about him? This scene from the movie classic ‘Good Will Hunting’ is about the difference between knowledge and experience. Having knowledge without experience, makes you smart maybe, but not wise. The character Will Hunting (Matt Damon) is about to find that out. He is smart, very smart. In fact, with his extremely high IQ he outsmarts everybody. Even his therapist (Robin Williams). Almost, because in this scene Williams explains quite impressively the difference between knowledge and experience. It’s a call to us all, to dare to experience. To dare and live.