To see the World in a Grain of Sand
And Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour
William Blake
These lines represent the core of my inspiration. I am inspired by beauty, art, knowledge and nature. These are the qualities associated with people mentioned in the blog or otherwise, that inspire me one way or another.
The most important of these for me is beauty. To me beauty is Zen and symmetry. Both these words express different things but at the core they are the same. The ultimate symmetry is zilch, nada, void, cipher or nil. The only thing that can be a perfect symmetry is symmetry itself; because otherwise, matter needs an antimatter to be symmetric.
Two of the people who inspire me; Jobs and Jordan came very close to defining beauty while Da Vinci inspires me to look for beauty in more than one place.
Steve Jobs
Jobs represents exactly the point where the sciences meet the arts, which beautifully represents the spirit of Zen. He was a genius visionary of the modern age who ushered in the personal technology revolution.
In 1976, Jobs and Steve Wozniak unleashed the first desktop computer and over 40 years since then, his tools continue to change our lives and the way we communicate. Along the way, he shook up entire industries and changed the way they worked. Just before the beginning of the 3rd millennium, the world was in the middle of a cultural tectonic shift and Jobs made a second coming at Apple and the world watched in sheer wonder and awe as he raised the company from the ashes like a phoenix with one product at a time.
His intuitive flair for people and products, his showmanship during his keynotes and the aesthetics (simplicity and symmetry) showcased in Apple products is something that inspires me every day and every moment of my life.
Steve Jobs’s death was not a surprise yet its impact reverberated around the world. The news was spread and the tributes were made on the new ‘i’ devices that he invented. He always had ‘one more thing…’ to announce. Tragically that one more thing has become ‘one last thing’. A few years from now a 20 year old is going to create and design and invent and redefine the world totally different than the way we see it now and that is going to be because of Steve. He has always inspired me to think different and that has been the mantra of my life.
Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo has always inspired me to be a polymath. He is another person who sits firmly in the space where the sciences meet the arts. For me, he is not just a genius of the renaissance age but also of a modern age. His extraordinary power of imagination and the insatiable curiosity and thirst for knowledge inspires me.
His ingenious, intuitive and brilliant perceptions towards technology, anatomy, engineering, optics and geology is worth taking a note. He was a visionary who saw things much ahead of his time, we can see this in his prototypes of the helicopter and the tank.
More than his paintings and sculptures, his outcomes of study and research of the technical aspects astonished me. This shows his way of thinking which created a lot of difference.
Michael Jordan
Michael Jordan has inspired me since I was playing basketball in school. Very few athletes in any sport have come close to what he has achieved in basketball. He was a complete player and is synonymous with perfection. He rightfully justified the titles ‘His Airness’ and ‘Air Jordan’ again and again with his amazing leaping abilities and simultaneously scoring and intimidating the opponents. He did not just score but he was also one of the best defensive players.
He made the three peat not just once but twice which is almost impossible. He has 6 NBA finals MVP (Most Valuable Player), 5 times NBA (Season) MVP, 14 NBA All Star line-ups and Best a Defensive Player award to his credit. To top it all his gentle and down to earth nature and the big grin is what makes him inspiring.
When ‘His Airness’ flew, he was not just jumping or dunking but it was sheer poetry in motion. It was a treat for the eyes and a stimulant for the mind. There are very few athletes like Zinedine Zidane and Roger Federer who defy the laws of physics in sports and they make it look magical. Michael Jordan soared above them all and secured a different place for himself on the altar of sports gods.
Inspiration makes us take the leap of faith and find love and fall in love. We must always keep our senses open for we never know where we will find inspiration next.
Debi Prasad Sahu is filmmaker and Social Media Head at Touching Lives. Experiencing life through the lens and knowledge-picking are among the great loves of his life.