Oftentimes, the best things in life are the simple things. Those simple gifts, which we take for granted that others may be envious towards us for possessing. A quantum moment leaves you breathless. Quantum moments also leave you with enduring memories of the experience.
Note: This is an esoteric article, one I write to share my quantum moment, a defining moment in my life which has caused me to take the journey I now take. It is more philosophical in nature than my usual articles about creating a positive cashflow or ideals centered around having money freedom.
What Are Quantum Moments?
Have you ever experienced pivotal moments in your life, shifts that left you feeling like something profound happened? If so, then you might have experienced a quantum moment.
But what are “quantum moments”?
According to Dr. Wayne Dyer, quantum moments are shifts that turn our world upside down. They are characterized by four qualities. They are a vivid, surprising, benevolent, and enduring.
- They are intense enough for us to notice every detail and to remember them forever.
- They are surprising, unexpected, uninvited, and unforeseen.
- They are benevolent, coming with feelings of peace, serenity, and bliss.
- A quantum moment never goes away. That moment is seared into our consciousness in a vivid picture that will not be forgot.
My Quantum Moment
It has been a long journey, one of 15 or more years. So, it will take me some time to tell you my story and how I came to my quantum moment. But I assure you that it will be worth it in the end, because my story could very well help you to achieve your quantum moment or to recognize a moment you may have experienced in the past as a quantum moment and not recognize it as so.
My Story
Ever since I was a kid, I’ve always wanted to write a book. I don’t know what kind of book I wanted to write. I just thought that it would be so cool to see my name on a book.
As a kid, I was quite the bookworm. My nose was almost always in a book of some sort. Even as a much older adult, I still find myself buried in books. To give you an idea of just how much I read, it’s better to tell you how often I don’t read. I might not read whatever novel I currently have on my Kindle for a week at most. This is how often I am reading.
My love affair with books started when I was a kid, before the days of the Internet and computer games. These were physical books, printed with ink on paper. They had a smell to them. To have a book, you had to go to the library to borrow one or the bookstore to buy one. You couldn’t very well just order a book online and have it shipped to you. Technology is so much better these days!
Back then, I found enjoyment in turning pages. First, you had to find the corner of the page, separating the oft-bound pages with your fingertips, then turn the page. As you read the book, you had to keep the pages open with your hands (or risk losing your place). It wasn’t practical to hold the book upside down in bed either. Not to mention this big, heavy book falling on your face would really hurt!
Also, I would often leave the pages crinkly from my wet palms.
When eReaders like Kindle Paperwhite hit the market, it was quite different from the physical books I had when I was a kid. If anything, it made reading even easier yet.
Still, there’s just something tactile and romantic about holding a bonafide physical book in your hands, printed on paper with ink. There’s that smell and the sensation of turning the pages.
Outside of school, my grandparents, who were the primary caretakers of my brother and me. We weren’t allowed to go outside and play. They were over-protective to the extreme. We stayed indoors 99% of the time, leaving the house only for school or to go home. Most of the time, we played with action figures or watched television. That’s if they’re not busy yelling at us for whatever perceived transgression we caused.
As a result, I chose reading as my main source of entertainment and escape from the harsh realities of living with them.
There’s just something calming and peaceful about curling up with a good book, my imagination, and the warmth of a wall heater.
Naturally, wanting to write a book became a natural part of me.
The Paradigm
“Writers starve.”
I heard this many times growing up when I told people I wanted to become a writer.
On the other hand, I was receiving contrasting information: “You write really well.”
People with whom I share my writing have given this compliment more than a handful of times in my life. I didn’t ask for what they thought about my writing. It was more just about having someone edit my work. Their compliments were an unexpected surprise.
Still, my friends and family gave me pragmatic advice: Find something practical to do and that you can make a living at. (Hint: It’s not writing.)
Over time, my rational and sensible brain quenched my desires to become a writer. Yet whenever I had to write, like for school I found this activity to be much more enjoyable than mathematics. In fact, I hated math. Yet, I became an engineer.
All in the name of being pragmatic.
The Creative Process
Writing is therapeutic for me. I didn’t know this but writing didn’t come natural for a lot of people. People told me time and again they hated writing with a passion.
I would give them a strange look of bemusement and wonder how they can say that. After all, writing is fun. What better way to communicate than to write? What better way to see how much I really learned something than to be able to teach someone else? What better way to share my joys and passions than through writing?
Most people hate looking at the paragraph over and over, let alone the same sentence. This is just a natural part of the authoring process. Yet, I didn’t know this. I could stare at the same page and the same sentence day in and day out and never tire of it. I could find many ways to say the same things. And I always found enjoyment in being able to do so. In fact, somewhere along my writing career I had to stop myself from doing this or I would never release anything.
Keep in mind that I’m still an engineer at this point. Yet, the writing bug never left me.
Engineering paid the bills and allowed me to live very well. It also afforded me positive cashflow and F.U. money.
Feeling Empty
Over the years, this void in my life expanded. Deep down, I knew I wasn’t doing my calling. I was in a career simply because it provided a good living. I had to do something.
It would take me over ten years to realize I didn’t have to quit my day job. I would write for the sake of writing. And so this blog and a novel currently in the works were born.
If you want to learn more about how money myths are preventing you from a positive cashflow, click here.
How My Quantum Moment Came About
I have a good friend who is part of my mastermind group and is a fictional writer. At the beginning of 2018, he suggested I start writing my book to see if it brings me joy. He and I have been talking about this for some time now.
So, I decided to do just this. I had been working on my book for about a week when my friend and I spoke again. He knew I had been working on my book and wanted to know how it was going. I told him writing the book has given me a huge amount of joy and creativity. Now, I have a reason to get up earlier in the mornings these days. I spend the day lost in the creative process.
I was excited to tell him what I was doing and how much joy I found in it!
After I got off the phone, I started to change for the gym. After spending the day buzzed with creativity and a long writing blitz, along with sharing my story with my friend, I started to see how the dots connected together. I flashed back to all those times I spent reading Tom Clancy novels under the warm glow of a reading lamp back when I was in college and living in San Francisco.
Along with a cup of hot water, my feet were propped up on a small, plastic stool (my makeshift Ottoman) no more than a foot off the ground. I would warm my toes next to the gentle humming of a wall heater. It would often be 55 F outside in the evenings, in the day time and in the evenings of July. Even though I was just a poor college student, I felt rich with this simply creature comfort. I would get lost in the world of Clancy verse for the next couple of hours.
This was how I spent almost every evening from 11 pm to 1 am during the summer time.
Fast-forward almost 15 years, one day someone handed me a Dean Koontz novel called Watchers. I asked him why he gave me the book. He said it was for no particular reason other than he thought I might enjoy it. I did. That was several years ago now. I remembered bringing that book with me for a job interview in Seattle, WA, back when I still had desires to relocate to the Pacific Northwest.
The grey of the Northwest is as dramatic as people say. It’s like a perpetual dusk settling all around you. The moisture in the air is quite high. If you’ve never experienced the warmth sucking out of your bones, Seattle is a good place to experience this. I just remember it being frigid cold. So, I stayed indoors for most my entire trip and read the book by the warmth of the fireplace in the hotel lobby, as I was meant to.
The Best Things in Life Are Simple
For now, let’s return to the present, taking a moment from that Dean Koontz book.
Aaron Copland’s Simple Gifts started to play while I changed. Except I didn’t recognize the piece initially. I just remember it sounding beautiful. It was around 5:20 pm and the living room was starting to get dark. This was shortly after getting off the phone with my friend.
As the melody filled the room, a voice soon said to me, “This is a gift I’ve given you. It’s taken you most of your life see it is. Sometimes things are really that simple.”
Simple?
Yes, simple Gifts.
Just like Copland’s piece.
I just experienced my quantum moment. But I wouldn’t know it just yet.
The Moment Slowly Comes
Writing is a basic tenant of human communication. Though we like to think we’re beyond something as simple as pen and paper in this age of technology, at the end of the day it’s all being able to communicate well.
When you take away all the low-attention, impulsive, dumb videos that loiter that Internet landscape, generating millions of dollars a month for some loud-mouthed jerk with a grandiose attitude, and occupying aimless hours of other people’s time, it comes down to just text. You search for text when you need an answer to a question. That’s how all search engines works.
Remember how I said earlier that I’ve heard time and time over from 95% of other people that they HATED writing? I didn’t understand what they meant. It took me many long years to figure out what comes easy and natural to us may not be the case for someone else.
These things come easy to us because of our innate and inborn aptitudes. We gravitate towards them. It’s the same reason why I could never be one of those “jerks” on YouTube who seem to make videos containing no intrinsic or extrinsic value. It’s the same reason I could never become a doctor. I don’t like the sight of blood. I will never understand why paramedics with 30 years of experience almost seem to get their jollies off at the sight of the insides of a human body.
And I wouldn’t know I was going through this quantum moment until half an hour later, when I was actually at the gym. As I was on the leg press machine, I wondered what had happened in that darkened living room with Copland playing in the background.
And so it came to be that on May 20th, 2018 at 5:40 Pacific Time while standing in the growing dusk of the late afternoon in my home that I had a quantum moment.
When this quantum moment occurred, it was surprising and came out of nowhere . I didn’t invite it, and I wasn’t looking for it. Yet, I am glad it came because that moment changed how I looked at myself forever.
It was a confluence of spending the entire day lost in the bliss of creation, of speaking to my friend, and of listening to Simple Gifts. Take away any one of the three, and the quantum moment would not have come to be.
I can tell you the details of the afternoon and the music that was playing on my computer. I can tell you what I was wearing, doing and feeling that late afternoon.
When the quantum moment stuck, I was at peace. I rode waves upon waves of tranquility upon seeing how the moments in my life are interconnected, both the good and especially the bad.
I saw that the Dean Koontz book, Watchers, was given to me for a reason. In that story, the main villain committed some extraordinarily graphic and psychotic crimes. I thought it would be against common human decency and morality to explore such depths in my own novel when I started writing it a week ago.
When I experienced my quantum moment and thought back to the book, I stood corrected. I understand now why my friend gave the book to me. I am born to write. Yet, I spent most of my life turning my back away from my gift.
But our gifts have a funny way of showing themselves to us. At one point in my life, I was asked to help write a club’s newsletter because no one else wanted to do it. It was during this time that I learned other people hated writing. And I would rediscover my joy through writing.
It took me over 40 years of my life to see writing as my unique gift and to be brave enough to share my writing with the world.