20 Times Jason Silva Left Us In Awe With Love And Life
By William Alec
One great thing about inspiration is that in a way, it is contagious.
Jason Silva, creator of the series Shots of Awe, film maker and Emmy nominated TV personality will inspire you trough these life altering quotes and in turn you will get to inspire others as well:
Jason also gave us a great interview.
1. When he reminded us that a great kiss dissolves fear
” [A kiss]…. fills you with a kind of cosmic reassurance, all thoughts of death and all the anxiety dissipate”
2. When he defined love as
“the beauty of the promise of immortality and also it’s the joint mourning of lovers that know that they might die. And so, love is the answer to the problem of human existence. But it doesn’t solve the problem of human existence.”
3. When he made us feel that we are “seekers”
“To be a seeker is to be a restless mind. Is to have the fire in the belly. To be defined, consumed, agitated by curiousity. Is to want to know the world, to want to map the world, to want to design, refine and augument the world”.
4. When he defined the creative process in a way many creative souls can related to
“Making art is a kind of exorcism. You have to die and be reborn and then when you are resurrected you are like: Wow! Look what I brought back”
5. When he made us see cinema from a new perspective
“[Cinema is] the only way in which we can see the interior states of another. Literally. Subjective experience can only be presented through cinema”
6. When he made us realise that we are living in what was once just an idea
“The whole man made world is an article of the mind. By many accounts, we live inside our own minds already. When you’re flying on an airplane you fly inside your own mind because that has been made by the mind.
7. When he reminded us that living in the present moment and experiencing something fully help us relieve fear
“The weight of the now in all of its gravity and splendour […] can serve to purge you of your angst. This is a transformative experience”.
8. And that we also, in those moments, feel a fleeting sense of immortality
“This is existential medication. We address the existential panic […] and we push it out of our minds. […] Thoughts of immortality dissipate and we get to inhabit some kind of eternal now. Immortality now.”
9. When he gave us plenty of reasons to be grateful in 2017
“Each one of us is already a miracle. If you can breathe, if you can think, if you can love, if you can yearn, you’ve won the lottery. Just think of all of the sperm that you had to triumph over…”
10. And yet some more reasons for why you should be grateful instead of complaining
“Yet here we are. Visionary beings, aware that we are aware, with this capacity to engineer the impossible, to imagine, to conceive, to create, to design, to upgrade.[…] And yet, we complain.”
11. When he told us clear that the key to loving life is on the other side of bordeom
“Transcending jadedness becomes a moral duty, a moral requirement if you want to get any kind of pleasure from being alive. If we are to get any kind of awe and wonder from every day.”
12. When he gave us the antidote to what he describes as the “collective neurosis”
“There is only one solution […] and it has been identified as a creative flow state. Die into the moment. Surrender. Submit. It’s what the jazz musicians talk about when they are in the zone and let go of everything”
13. When he tried to explain to a baby about the miracle she represents
“You are transcendent. But you are also like made of flesh. So holding you is like what is this actually piece of divine miracle that somehow this universe allowed to organise… it’s insane. Looking into your eyes actually feels like looking at a galaxy.”
14. When he said something to which all artists and art lovers can relate to
“It’s important to question even the things we take for granted. It is important to make spaces for the artists. We need to create safe heavens and spaces for those who think different because at the end of the day that is the only way we evolve.”
15. When he told us that travelling has these effects on us
“[when you travel]… It hurls you into the present. It puts you into a state of flow, into a state of openness. You don’t carry around that screen of preconceptions, the been there and done that’s of the adult mind”.
16. And also made an interesting comparison between travelling and museums
“Travelling in essence functions very much like the museum. The museum takes ordinary objects or ideas and removes them from context and hangs them on the wall. All art does that. And by removing the ordinary, the everyday object from its context, you are able to see it as for the first time…”
17. When he made us feel very confused about who we are (being inspired by Cooley)
“In other words I am not who I think I am, I am not who you think I am. I am who I think you think I am. In other words, we make renderings of what other people think of us and actually play the role of becoming who we think they think we are.”
18. And when, after confusing us, he tried to make us understand our uniqueness better
“[…] accept the fact that identity is a fluid act of improvisation and that the self is not a solid thing and it has never been.”.
19. When he told us that the key to miracles is perception
“If we are able to harness, to leverage, to italicize, to focus our attention, everything becomes miraculous.”.
20. When he described sex as
“Human beings co-opting a biological function and making it into an aesthetic act. We are creatures of mind.”
Bonus: When he told us that “We are the gods now.”