There is no spoon

It's interesting to observe how various lessons about life comes from different sources which may be from anywhere. For me it was from a movie... well who am I kidding! for me mostly its from a movie :-). So here is one such lesson which I would like to share and illustrate. 

"There is no spoon" - is a famous phrase from the movie 'Matrix'. The script goes like this;

Spoon Boy: Do not try and bend the spoon; that's impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth.
Neo: What truth?
Spoon Boy: There is no spoon
Neo: There is no spoon?
Spoon Boy: Then you will see, it is not the spoon that bends, it is only yourself.

(You can watch it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAXtO5dMqEI)

The above conversation if seen in the movie and undertsood a little more you can actually relate to your everyday happenings of life which we see like that of the 'spoon'. A spoon is made of metal and its rigid and it does not change, like the happenings/situations of your life. For you to bend it, it will be you who has to change the way you see it and adapt yourself to deal with it.

Here is that lesson which I 'manipulated' a bit to drive the message across to a group of audience :-)

Illustration: I handed over some common objects (Pen, Pencil, Bag, Book) to 4 random people in the audience (without the knowledge of the others) and I went and stood facing myself to the wall, blindfolded.

While still facing the wall I started speaking,

"I see that A has something with him... please hold it up for others to see... it's a Pen... right?

I hear "yes"


I see that B has something with him... please hold it up for others to see... it's a Pencil... right?

I hear "yes"

I did the same with C and D

The I turned around and said "Wow!! I was right...! Can you do that?" I heard no's from the audience. 

"No You can’t, only I know this trick."

"What you witnessed here is my trick which I have designed and only I know the outcomes of it."

"However what I have demonstrated today is no trick but the greatness of who we all are… men and women and the power that is innate within us. We have these powers for us to use every day, every moment, every second and I want to make you realize, persuade and feel this power today."

"What did I do? I knew I was going to come here today and stand here and tell you what you guys were
holding after giving them to you. I had thought of this when I started preparing for this meeting and
started penning it down as this flow of idea came to me."

"But this right here is my future to the past that I had already thought… imagined."

"I was able to see this future happen as of yesterday and I have made it happen right in front of you
today!!"

"We all have that kind of power to see the future and make it happen as we wish to. Isn't that awesome!"

The above was an illustration to prove how we have the capacity to see beyond us and understand that "preparation" is nothing but already knowing the "future".

You change the way you look at things and you will see that every occurrence has multiple dimensions to it and in those dimensions you will see various new set of actions that you can take. 

Let me illustrate more with 2 more examples;

Do you know that your eye has physical muscles to completely change the way you look? 

If you remember, there used to be this picture game which used to come in various magazines before. There is a colourful picture design in front of you and the instructions would say that you need to stare at the picture for sometime and slowly move you face away from the picture and voila!! You see an image of a beautiful horse or a flower or a car emerging in front of you, in 3D view. Such pictures are called Stereograms. 

You look beyond the design and you can see beautiful images appearing in front of you, such are the experience that lies in little changes that you can do to look at things differently. 

Another simple example; 

Just raise one of you hand in front of you so that you can see the back of your palm. You will see the hand and 5 fingers. Now as you keep the hand in front of you try seeing beyond the hand at any object… now you will see as if more fingers have been added on the palm. A visual illusion yes, but still a compelling point that drives the message that you can see things differently by just altering the way you see it.

So, what we see may not be what we see and we just have to see it in a different view', you may
come to realize, as I did, that you may actually end up seeing only the best things in life.

“There is no spoon”.

(Written adaptation of my speeches from Toastmasters)