My Dear fellow Billionaires,

Let me outline for you

The advantages of being a mime

Corporeal mime is known as the art of physical articulation. Articulation is clear and distinct sounds in speech. Mimes know how to speak clearly and distinctly with their bodies in space.

A mime can make the invisible visible. Walls, balloons, ropes, canoes, elevators and windstorms can be images conjured in the minds of spectators with a few simple actions and principals.

A mime can work from the outside in. By imitating someone else, a mime can pretend to walk a mile in someone’s shoes. This embodied empathy unlocks both informed guesses and sometimes incredible insights.

Imitation is a generous act. Imitation requires a great deal of curiosity, time and attention. This kind of interest - where curiosity, time and attention are combined? That sounds a lot like love.

Mimes see everything in terms of movement.

Disadvantages:

People always trying to put you in a box.

Your  voice is found to be alarming, unexpected and strange when heard.

People don’t listen to you. Mime. You’re a mime. No one takes a mime seriously. How could you? Those clothes? That make up? The footwear. All mimes wear terrible shoes.

Mimes see everything in terms of movement.

Mimes see everything in terms of movement

That is a particularly problematic concept, especially for those seeking certainty.

Everything is always moving. Sitting still, you are an endless pit of motion. Blood, lymph, air, digestive stuff and all that other crap that I didn’t learn about in school. That’s all happening, moving. Doing that biology and physics stuff, even when you’re still. Stop breathing. Notice your pulse. Notice your heart.

Movement. 

(hits gong. long resonance. giggling begins)

Your cells are moving. There are billions of organisms moving within you.

At the molecular level, the stuff that stuff is made up of?

Moving.

And the stuff that stuff is made up of is also moving.

Moving all the time is kinda nutty when you think about it. If every bit of me and all the stuff that makes up me is always moving. And all the other bits of stuff that make up the stuff that makes up the stuff that’s not me are always moving? How can anyone be clear on what and where anything is? 

This must be really upsetting for people looking for inner stillness. Right? The peace seekers who want everything to be slow and controlled? They’re screwed. At the root of everything, the world’s just buzzing. Everything inside of us? The interior worlds, of the parts that make up our interior worlds, our most basic insidey bits? They are chaotic and irrational.

I’m in motion. You’re in motion reading this. My thoughts are coming from our collective past and connecting with you in an unknown future. Ideally you’re pooping.. (reading is essentially time travel. Reading newsletters is essentially time travel on toilets) We can’t ever be absolutely sure where anything is at any given time because it and we are all in constant motion.

Most of the movement we don’t see.  What we don’t see likely doesn’t have much impact on our moment to moment experience of existence. You can be as still as stone but even the molecules of stones have some movement. You just can’t see the tiniest of parts that make up a stone moving. But just because the movement is imperceptible, it doesn’t make a thing fixed, still or at rest.

Trees grow. Tectonic plates shift. Sub atomic particles behave in ways such that the more we learn the less certain we become. Our emotions, thoughts and relationships all move. Ideas ‘take hold’. ‘Movements,’ collective actions create change. Movement and change are so similar they could be cousins. 

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Here’s a mime experiment you can try in your non spare time. Find a person who talks a lot. They like to talk so much they tend to dominate conversations. If this is you, find the person who irritates you the most. They likely also dominate conversations even more than you!

We’re now going to play with imperceptible movement. The goal is to start a movement so slowly that no one notices until you are well into the motion. This is startling. The ideal reaction? “I didn’t see that coming”

With this person who talks a lot and doesn’t notice you. Get them talking. Wait until they are fully involved with the heroic tale of outrage and triumph. Notice how they are speaking. How are they moving? What is the ‘action’ or movement of the conversation? If they were a wild animal, what kind of animal would they be? Slowly, imperceptibly begin to raise your hand as though asking to speak. Do this so slowly that they do not notice. 

How high can you get before they notice?

How gently can you interrupt them?

Do you remember what kind of wild animal they were? How would you face such a beast?

Bonus points if you’re a perfectionist, sadist or just can’t love yourself and need to believe that you’re ‘getting better’ answer this: Who would be able to pull this off with the roles reversed?