J.D. Moyer

sci-fi author, beatmaker

Tag: life spark

Pour Gasoline On Your Life Spark — Part II

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On July 10

In Creative Work/Career, Metaprogramming

"Following your sparks" is providing positive feedback loops for your brain ... recklessly throwing fuel on your interests and ideas ... the risks of not growing your brain outweigh the extreme measures you might need to take.

Last week I wrote about the idea that nurturing your life spark — whatever activity or subject dominates your interest at any given time — may be an effective way to encourage adult neurogenesis (one of the ultimate markers of brain health and mental health).  I also defined life spark as being more focused, specific, and malleable than the term life passion (the latter annoys me because it implies a monolithic singular interest that never changes throughout a person’s life).

The post was getting too long, so I broke it up into two parts.  Here’s Part II …

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Pour Gasoline On Your Life Spark — Part I

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On July 5

In Creative Work/Career, Metaprogramming

The gasoline fight from Zoolander — not what I’m talking about.

In Japanese the word is ikigai, in French raison d’être, and in English life passion.  While there are cultural differences in meaning, the concepts are similar.

Life passion is the most frustrating and least useful concept of the three.  The phrase strongly implies both singularity and permanence.  A person has only one true life passion, and it doesn’t change.

I think life rarely works that way.  Even looking at the most inspired and productive individuals in history, many of them were all over the place.  Thomas Jefferson, in addition to his service as a founding father and POTUS #3, was also a voracious reader, an accomplished architect, an inventor of mechanical devices, and a polyglot.  Issac Newton is famous as a physicist and mathematician, but was equally consumed by both alchemy and theology.  Buckminster Fuller contributed to humanity as an inventor, philosopher, writer, and speaker.  Marie Curie won the Nobel Prize in both chemistry and physics.

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