Why Keen?

August 17, 2009August 17, 2009

TED Talks : Finding our Genius

For more than two years now, I’ve been in a creative line, and I must say, the stress level has never gone down. I always feel this fear that my “creative juice” would run dry, so to speak.

So, while idling surfing for some TV to watch (I don’t watch anything on the real TV nowadays), I found this interesting video by Elizabeth Gilbert on nurturing creativity, and it struck a chord.

She mentioned about the origins of the word Genius, very interesting. Genius is like a spirit guide, or a deity, and it is believed that there every human being has a Genius attached to him/her. Here’s what I found about the word Genius on Wikipedia :-

—
Genius in Roman mythology is the individual instance of a general divine nature that is present in every individual person, place or thing
…
Every nameable mythological figure was a genius of some sort; but further, the rational powers and abilitiies of each and every human being were attributed to his soul, which was a genius. (Source : Wikipedia)
—

So Elizabeth Gilbert proposes that all artists try to put their burdens as well as their ego on this disembodied entity, their genius, and let it take claim or credit for the magnificence or failure of their work. Aha…

By the way, I’ve tried. Though it was a little silly, I actually spoke out loud and said, “It’s now up to you”, especially since I was under a very tight editing schedule for my last wedding shoot, and you know what? It was one of my better works. So maybe it works, huh?

Here are some of my shots from a wedding my genius helped at:-

July 24, 2009July 24, 2009

TED Talks : Science of Happiness

I’ve discovered this little gem on the Internet not too long ago, the TED Talks, an annual event where various speakers contribute new ideas in the form of lectures, often with demonstrations of cutting edge technology.

There are videos of the talks available for free, and this is so much better TV than 90% of negativity we get on TV nowadays. Watching any one of these videos make me feel so hopeful for humankind!

Anyway, found this talk at TED 2004 by Nancy Etcoff about something very close to my heart. The science behind Happiness. Would probably be discussing more later on, so stay tuned.

July 21, 2009July 21, 2009

The Hand That Claps – A Lesson in Reciprocity

I was attending my sister’s convocation ceremony with my parents last week, and was wondering about something we noticed. As each member of graduant’s names are called, only about a handful of the audience, fellow graduants included, were clapping to cheer them on.

Probably only the handful of relatives, as well as friends among the audience who recognized him/her contributed to the “resounding applause”.

How sad is that?

One family sitting in front of us were so adamant about lending no one a hand that they sat through the whole hour, wide awake, mind you, without their hands leaving their armpits, not even for their son/daughter on stage? (Maybe they were cold? It was a little chilly in the hall. And ten points to my dear mother for taking notice!)

Hey, here’s an idea! Maybe someone can design a system that would install an applause ring tone to all phones in the hall, so that if someone’s phone rings, it would be that of the sound of applause?

Good manners aside, I was just wondering if there was any reason anyone could bring up to appeal to these folks.

What I know of is this…

If you open your heart to cheer for another’s achievements, you will be that much happier with your own.

If you allow yourself to be happy for someone, you are programming your brain to be more receptive to happiness.

Well, the opposite of this is not to let other’s lack of cheer make you unhappy. So those ten points I gave my mom? I take them back, because we shouldn’t vest too much interest in other’s lack of happiness. It really cramps our own style!

: How To Be A Happy Person? By sharing in another’s happiness!