Paycheck : Do You Want to Know the Future?

Would you like to know what the future has in stall for you ? In fact, the whole world is obsessed with the idea of knowing what will happen tomorrow, next week or in ten years time. The movie “Paycheck” starring Ben Affleck is a riveting thriller about the past and the future – and a huge paycheck he never gets.

Analysts make a fortune predicting the ups and downs of the stock exchange. We watch the weather report to see whether we can go to the beach on Sunday and try to pick 6 out of 49 numbers to win our first or second million – but none of these systems work with a great degree of accuracy.

In ‘Paycheck’, Ben Affleck is a clever computer engineer who develops rip-off computer products for high-tech corporations, but must always have his short-term memory erased after each assignment so that his employers can claim the copyright. In his job for the “Allcom” company, it takes him three years to build a machine that can look into the future – and is promptly swindled out of his paycheck.

But he knew what was coming and after his memory is erased, Uma Thurman as his biologist girlfriend helps him to retrace what happened in order to prevent a global catastrophe. That’s the plot, but why am I writing this ?

What struck me was a little sentence in the dialogue :

“Once you know the future, you don’t have a future anymore”.

I had never thought of that before, but it’s true. What is it that we call the future ? In my view, it is the sum total of all the interactions we still have to experience to fulfill the aspirations which we think will make us a more successful person.

In other words, the future – by definition – includes an element of uncertainty, and if you take that away, you don’t have a future. All you would have is a path on which you go through the motions, but what for ? And where to ? Life as we know it on this planet would be meaningless if we knew the destination of every road we travel, the outcome of every action we take.

We tend to forget that in reality time doesn’t exist. It is just a concept – a very useful and necessary one – that human beings have to live by in their limited consciousness to manage a number of experiences and learn from them. We cannot see both sides of the same coin at once, only one after the other. Even a mirror doesn’t help, believe me.

That’s precisely why we are so intrigued by the future – we want to know it all, right now : What’s going to happen ? Will we succeed or fail in whatever we are doing ? This curiosity is driving us forward.

We all know some people who couldn’t be bothered, of course : ‘Who cares what happens tomorrow, as long as I have a good time today’. We sometimes admire them because on the surface, they don’t seem to have any doubts in their ‘happy-go-lucky’ lives. If you are not driving your challenges, however, you will be driven and confronted with them – life will not stand still for you.

And those who constantly fear that some disaster is around the corner ? Looks like they magically attract every manner of misfortune and not make any progress at all – and yet they too will eventually learn from their continual setbacks.

There is plenty of evidence that some gifted people can in fact look into the future, though – what is it that they see then ? If there is no past and no future, all that really exists is the present moment, and each of these moments literally has limitless possibilities, more than we realize. What we get an occasional glimpse of is potential, a likelihood of events, but nothing cast in concrete.

The big chance we owe to ourselves is to shape that potential into something worthwhile and exciting and learn from it, with everything we’ve got. Since we all bring something unique to the party, imagine the endless variety !

Paycheck or no paycheck : life today is the real thriller, and I have my very own. So do you.

Won’t you please help me out quickly ?

I have just put up a new page on my BLUE CRANE website : “Inspirational Movies”, under Recommendations. You can see it here.

They are all movies that reminded me of an important truth, or made me think. I am looking for other good films in this category which I may have overlooked, or never noticed.

I really enjoy watching a good movie, so won’t you please just tell me what YOUR #1 favourite movie is ?

Just a quick reply eMail – I’d be grateful !

Thanks in advance from : Berend @ BLUE CRANE – Fly with us.

Pay It Forward – You Can Change South Africa One Favour at a Time

About 20 years ago, Catherine Ryan Hyde was driving alone at night in a rough area of downtown Los Angeles in her old tattered car. It was the best she could afford, she drove it all the time and relied on the car for every cent of cash she earned.

When she braked at an off-ramp, the engine suddenly died. All the lights went out and the car started to fill with smoke. She jumped out to see two men running towards her, one of them holding a blanket – pushing past her, he yanked open the bonnet : the engine was on fire.

The car could have exploded at any moment, but this total stranger smothered the blaze and saved her car, her livelihood and possibly her life. When the emergency was over she looked up to thank him – but he was gone.

Over the following months she decided that if she couldn’t do anything to repay the man, she would look for others who needed help as much as she did the night her engine burned.

When Catherine did find these opportunities they weren’t very dramatic at first, but meant a lot to strangers in trouble who often asked how they could repay her.

“Don’t pay it back to me,” she said.
“Pay it forward to someone else.”

This incident was a turning point in her life. She wanted to hold on to the idea of sending people into the world owing a favour to a stranger and when she wrote her second novel ‘Pay It Forward’ in 2000 she often had fantasies of people emulating the book :

“There are infinite possiblities for the ways in which this could be done. How many times do we step around a homeless person on the street? Oh dear, we think, that person certainly has a problem. But we let it remain their problem. We would not normally think to stop and make it our own.”
“It’s a new way of thinking; to begin to see beyond our own problems into other people’s lives and figure out if there is some way we can help them.”

She didn’t write the novel expecting a to create a social movement, but that’s exactly what happened : the ‘Pay It Forward Foundation’ was established in September 2000, followed by the Warner Brothers movie the same year and the ‘Pay It Forward Movement – Changing the World One Favour at a Time’ has a very active representation in eight countries since 2002.

I have seen the movie three times now and at first I felt let down by the ending. Now I understand it, but I really want you to go and see the film so here’s the story without giving too much away :

Trevor McKinney (Haley Joel Osment) is a 12 years old boy who gets an assignment from his new, disfigured Social Studies teacher Eugene Simonet (Kevin Spacey) : think of something that will change the world and put it into action.

Trevor’s idea is deceptively simple – do a good deed for three people and in return, ask each of them to ‘pay it forward’ to three more. “So nine people get helped. Then those people have to do twenty-seven … then it sort of spreads out.”

His attempts to put the concept into action at first don’t seem to work out : a drug-addict he befriends cannot mend his ways, but later talks a woman out of jumping off a bridge. A reporter gets wind of his idea and becomes a benefactor as he retraces Trevor’s efforts after his car is destroyed in an accident and he is given a very expensive Jaguar by a rich stranger.

Meanwhile, Trevor is worried about his alcoholic mother Arlene (Helen Hunt), not only because his brutal father (Jon Bon Jovi) might return at any time; he also tries to bring his mother and his new teacher together – they are both emotionally scarred by the past, but eventually their relationship heals some very deep wounds.

In the end though, Trevor pays a high price for helping a classmate fight off some school-bullies.

Just another sentimental Hollywood production?

Not at all : this is one of the few films that has a tangible impact on societies worldwide and highlights an important message : that one person can make a difference, even in this materialistic and often cynical world. It inspires to help without expectation of reward or remuneration – and it works, not only in the movie!

After you’ve seen the film, you stop and think about the meaning of life – and some people take action : The Pay It Forward Movement is the real-life reaction to Catherine Ryan Hyde’s novel and their website shows many inspiring stories and media reports from all over the world, not only the USA, Canada and the UK.

The material is also used in many schools and colleges and with all this in mind I have now launched a WeBlog for Pay It Forward South Africa – Changing South Africa One Favour at a Time.

In this country, we have a history of violence and a high crime rate, but for every offense there are 99 acts of kindness – it is my hope that all this benevolence will now be as liberally reported on this website as brutality is in the traditional media.

And why wait to pay it forward until someone helps you out of a predicament? If you think back, I am sure you’ll remember many incidents where other people made life easier for you.

Just look where you can assist and start doing favours to others – pay it forward! It doesn’t have to be anything big or dramatic; you’ll be surprised how much goodwill is coming your way although you don’t expect to be rewarded.

Until next time, all the best from : Berend

Five Years After 9/11 – Life in a World of Illusions

When was the last time you couldn’t believe your eyes? For me that was Tuesday 11 September 2001, five years ago today, when I saw airplanes crashing into the World Trade Centre in New York on TV, collapsing the twin towers within two hours.

This simply cannot be happening, I thought. Is this a movie? It was just too outrageous to be real – and yet, as the tragedy unfolded before our very eyes live on TV, I had to accept it as true – seeing is believing, isn’t it?

As incredible as the 9/11 events were at the time, they are part of our reality today and we see the world with different eyes – life as we know it has changed, not only in the USA.

Although I haven’t been visiting New York myself since then, it never occurred to me that 9/11 might be a gigantic, cruel show. Of course is wasn’t. However, we can believably show anything on screen these days with special effects technology.

After all, in 1997 a movie called ‘Wag the Dog’ with Dustin Hoffman and Robert de Niro won two Oscars : a clever Hollywood producer and an American politician fabricate a war in Albania for TV, only to divert the public’s attention from a sex-scandal which threatens the re-election of the country’s president. Is it ironic that this whole scenario is very believable these days?

Film producers and politicians know that perception, not reality, is paramount to influence people. We tend to believe what we see with our own eyes, and yet our eyes betray us all the time : the long lines in the picture on the left for example are parallel, but the clever positioning of the short lines creates the illusion that they are not.

The second, rather famous image on the right here illustrates that what you see depends on you, not the picture – do you see the young woman or the old woman? Change your focus and you can see them both – there are always at least two sides to every story.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder – what we believe is true for us. There is no objective reality because we all see the world through different glasses. We can choose the pink or the dark variety at any time, even view life through the bottom of a wine-bottle if we find that appealing.

We forget that we can choose though, only to take the same habitual viewpoints all the time, no matter what we observe – and miss a great opportunity to consciously create our own reality, to live in a world as we want it.

Life is a subjective experience, a projection : you tailor-make it to your own individual specifications. Life is an illusion, like a movie or a play on stage, although it appears to be real at the time of viewing because you immerse in it to feel the excitement, drama and joy of the action.

Why would you want to see a horror movie then?

Because you also love the terror and suspense – it is exhilarating and makes you feel alive. In a cinema, you are conscious of the fact that you are watching an illusion, that you have a temporary experience and will leave the theatre to return to ‘real’ life afterwards.

But life as a whole is the same way. Once we realise that we constantly create our pain as well as our happiness because we want or need to experience it, we’ll take responsibility for everything that happens to us and accept the power to change it.

If we did it, we can undo it.

There is nothing in your life that you have not created or attracted. You are the producer, director, scriptwriter and main character in this play. As long as you believe that there is someone else out there setting the stage, you dis-empower yourself to do anything about the performance.

But still, all sensations portrayed in the show are temporary and we can choose to either label them as painful or enjoyable – nothing is painful, unless you think it is. Let’s not forget that there are people who are jubilant about what happened on 9/11 in New York.

Five years down the line, have we learnt anything? Let’s just say that what I see today only confirms my resolve to stay out of politics and create my own world.

And some people still need their eyes tested, I think.

Until next time, all the best from : Berend

How To Get What You Want – The Law of Attraction

George Bernhard Shaw once said : “Life is not about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.” Did you know that? We create all the time, in fact – but most of it is unconscious : we literally don’t know what we are doing.

The irony is that most of us think we do know how to create what we want : we set goals, work hard towards them and sometimes achieve them. Not always, but sometimes. We think we can get what we want if we are lucky, born with certain talents or have a lot of money.

What we believe is that our circumstances dictate our actions and feelings, whilst in reality we create our circumstances with our thoughts. Your environment is a mirror image of yourself, says the Universal Law of Correspondences – I also wrote a chapter about it in my essay “The REAL Facts of Life”.

This principle of correspondences is also called the Law of Attraction these days, and there is a lot of discussion about it on the Internet at the moment.

The Law of Attraction is probably the single most important principle for every human being to understand in this day and age. The Law of Attraction simply says that you attract into your life whatever you think about. Your dominant thoughts will find a way to manifest – in Steve Pavlina’s words.

I have introduced Steve Pavlina to you in June this year and the best I can do to bring the Law of Attraction closer to you is direct you to some of his articles on his Blog – they have substance and are brilliantly written.

The first one you should read is The Law of Attraction which answers some tough questions around how this principle works, and when.

Very closely related to this topic is his article Creative Observation if you want to know why the manifestation of intentions sometimes does not seem to work at first.

Excellent background information on manifesting can be found in How Intentions Manifest.

And then there is his article Cause-Effect versus Intention-Manifestation - essential reading because you need to know what the first crucial step is for creating what you want that most people forget, and because you have to recognise how you sabotage yourself once you are working your way towards the achievement of your goals.

There is of course much more to learn about the way life works, but the Law of Attraction is the core without which all the rest doesn’t make much sense.

When you have read Steve Pavlina’s articles above, and some more you’ll find in the process, go to a good bookstore over the weekend and get “Ask and It Is Given” – ‘Learning To Manifest Your Desires’ by Esther Hicks, the book on which the film ‘The Secret’ is based – Steve reviews the film here.

Yes, all this is quite an eyefull of reading, but I assume that subscribers to COMPASS are serious about improving themselves and their lives. I am absolutely convinced that once you understand the material offered in this single eMail alone and start practicing the principles suggested, you can fundamentally turn your life around, if that is your intention.

Have a nice weekend! All the best from : Berend