50 Feet to Letting Go

Around Boulder, CO, there is a joke that garages aren’t for cars. We have so many toys – bikes, kayaks, camping gear, and more – that it all goes in the garage, and hence the car remains outside. As a seven year resident of Boulder, I happen to fall into that category where my car has never been in a garage, until recently. My garage would get filled with bikes and some storage, and become a workshop. If I had arranged everything well, I could fit my car in, but it would be tight, and it really wasn’t worth it.

About a year ago I moved into a house that had a huge garage with tons of extra space. Enough that I could store everything AND get my car in! I was thrilled about the idea that in the summer I wouldn’t wake up with a very hot car, and in the winter I wouldn’t have to scrape snow and ice off! That there was still plenty of room for bikes and tools and room to move around.

The garage though was not attached to the house. Between the garage and the house was about a dozen steps and a long walkway, so perhaps 50 feet from the garage to the front door. Upon leaving the garage, either I could walk out the side door where the garage door openers naturally are – or walk out the actual garage door, which was far more convenient. I choose the latter. What this meant was that I could use the garage door opener that was velcroed to the wall in the entry way. That all sounds so convenient and easy.

Yet for most of the first six months I lived in the house, I would very frequently FORGOT to close the garage door when I came into the house. Later on in the evening I’d have a thought – did I close the garage door, and then I’d walk outside to check. Sure enough, it was open. Now I wasn’t worried about stuff being stolen because I was quite far from town and the neighborhood was very safe. I was worried about bears and other critters getting into the garage, so it really was important to close the garage door.

I started reminding myself when I walked out the garage door to close it when I arrived at the front door. Occasionally this worked, meaning maybe a quarter of the time. So the reminders became stronger and stronger. My housemate would also forget so for a while we even had notes in the front to remind us to close the garage door! And finally after about eight months of doing this it became automatic to walk into the house and close the garage door. It actually became so automatic that I would forgot that I even did it, and then would later have a thought – did I close the garage door?

This whole process has been bewildering and bizarre. Between the garage door and the front door, about 50 feet, how could I forget something so simple so often? You know the Buddhist saying – chop wood to chop wood, carry water to carry water. I thought remembering could be that focused. But in that 50 feet I have to concentrate on steps, what I’m carrying, getting out keys for the front door, and ultimately amusement at seeing my dog smiling and wagging her tail as I approached the glass front door. It’s easy to see how I could forgot, but still!  

At the same time I felt great beauty and ease in that forgetting. Letting go of something so easily. It had importance and it didn’t. Like seeing a flower, taking in its beauty and then flowing to the next moment and the beauty there.

For me, it also brought up the question, why it is we can’t forget other things that easily. Like when I’m scared to bits by a lightning strike so close that it shakes the house, or the person who cut me off in the car earlier in the day, or the unjustified comment at work. I can hang on to those for hours, or days, … or longer, as we do. It’s fairly certain that those things have more meaning (meaning we give them) and with that an emotional context, and so the body and mind hang on.

The question is there though – could we learn to let go? Maybe not to forget, but to let go so it doesn’t became a lingering gremlin. Maybe it really is the count to 10 method, or the the idea of just breathe, or any number of similar concepts. It has been a great reminder for me, and maybe now for you.

Just 50 feet … a small distance measured in time or space – to bring our lives into a great ease …

Just 50 feet …

The Bunk of Positive Affirmations

Imagine that you own a home, and after being gone for a few weeks on vacation, you come home to find that several walls have mold growing on them. It doesn’t matter how much, but there’s mold. Would you just grab some paint and paint over that mold?

That’s the analogy to start with for thinking about positive affirmations. Positive affirmations can be just like putting a cover coat over all those negative thoughts or ideas that you continue to have.

If you leave the paint long enough, the paint will wear off and the mold will continue to grow again. You can take it another direction and every year lay over a new coat of paint. But you know what – that mold is STILL there. It’s still growing and affecting the environment and sooner or later it’s going to have a real effect.

You can do the same with positive affirmations. Use them for a while and then forget and the old patterns come back. Or keep practicing and adding new ones. But you know what – those old thoughts are STILL there.  They are still under the surface, and just like instincts, sooner or later they will come back out in a moment of stress or tiredness or pressure.

Let me back up a little – I’ve NOT saying positive affirmations, or any similar behavioral change is not effective or useful. They can be incredibly useful and empowering. What I want to you to understand is that unless you clean up and address the underlying state of affairs – the mold in the paint analogy – the old stuff is still there, and will come back.

What do I mean by underlying state of affairs? I’m talking about beliefs, patterns, values, ideals, promises, rules that you have committed to throughout your life. In all likelihood you have consciously forgotten most of these. They are still part of your memory and your body awareness. Here’s an example – think of that time in third grade when you were embarrassed in front of your classmates and you swore you’d never do anything to look stupid again. Maybe you didn’t say it out loud, but somewhere in your being you said it. And it stuck, it became part of your bodily and cellular makeup.

Now I hate computer analogies, but think of those beliefs or rules, etc., like a virus on your computer. It can be fairly innocuous, but it’s still there. You’d never knowingly leave a virus on your computer. I’m also sure you’d never knowingly keep around a rule for yourself that is like that mold. The clue here is knowingly – you don’t consciously know you are following those rules.

Still, if you are using positive affirmations, you have a desire for your life to be different in some way, even better. The question is, how much does it matter to you? Finding and addressing those rules, promises, values, etc takes courage. Sometimes it’s easy, sometimes it’s hard. And it takes time.

So how do you address those beliefs, ideas, patterns, and more? There are many ways and any deeper discussion is way beyond this article, but here are some techniques, clues and ideas to research and look into. Natural Linguistic Processing (NLP), cellular memory and cellular healing (books: Biology or Belief, and Molecules of Emotion), Somatic Therapies including Hakomi, Cranial Sacral Therapy, The Journey, NeuroSculpting. An especially important idea is Forgiveness (book: Forgive for Good). There are many, many more, but these are the ones I’ve worked with and found to be especially effective.

Working with positive affirmations is good, but he question stands – how much does it really matter to you? The idea of courage, which has roots in the word for heart, is that courage is not the absence of fear, rather the knowing that something is more important (Ambrose Redmoon). What is it that’s important that you are willing to move towards?

42 Days

Just before Christmas I began 30 days of yoga after being inspired by a conversation over Thanksgiving. Really I figured once I got past about 20 days, getting all the way through January would be doable and make it an even 6 weeks straight of yoga every day. What a great experience it’s been!

I laughed, cried, and smiled.

Surprisingly, I danced several times.

For several classes, I was a completely dripping – hot yoga is not my favorite thing.

Getting up at 5:30 for a yoga class is not my favorite thing either.

I was able to do a whole bunch of poses I’ve never even seen before, much less tried on my own.

A hot yoga class after a root canal does wonders.
More than once I was the only male in the class. And at least once I was the oldest.

After a while I started to be able to find a flow at home doing yoga on my own.

I learned to get over being self conscious about taking my shirt off when it was hot in class.

For an entire class, I felt complete stillness and how amazing that was.

Learning to pace day after day was part of the learning and challenge, and I believe I mostly worked it out.

A two and a half hour class is a lot of yoga – and I was able to do it.

And two classes in one day is also a lot – and it was fun.

Everything about my practice is different – I can bend, twist, and stretch more than before. I can breathe deeper and in more places. My core is stronger. I know I feel different from six weeks ago though I couldn’t exactly say what the difference is – but I like it!

I’m grateful to all the teachers and studios I experienced over the past six weeks – Amy Benton, Nikki Rogers, Jeff Bailey, Steph Uvalle, Stephen Uvalle, Jeannie Manchester, Brenda Wong, Angela Grace, Barb Beard Passalacqua, Michelle Anderson, Camden Hock, Livia Shapiro, Sasha Cohen, Patrick, Jack, Valerie D’Ambrosio, and Sofia Diaz.

A special thanks to Kirsten Warner for such great support and insight.

Now it’s time to wash some clothes and my mat! And as much as I’ve enjoyed this, I’ve missed running, so it’s time to put on those shoes and head back onto the trails and balance out running and yoga.

The Lady with the Dragon Eyes

We sat together, facing each other, she and I. We looked into each other’s eyes, something beyond staring and more than gazing. To be part of a deep revealing and connection. She slipped into my soul to be witness to the story of the spirit that lives, for now, in this human body. Communing and relating with an internal environment hardly contained by physical form. Feeling the sovereigns unmarked by time. Savoring the puzzle pieces still not fitted into form and place yet. Discerning a whole picture devoid of layers of consciousness.

While she looked, I noticed too. A feeling that time and space stopped or didn’t even exist or intermixed. Light became twisted and fuzzy, fading, focusing, returning. What was I really in this moment? Countless lifetimes from so many realities danced through my perception. Each revealed for an eternity of an instant to be fully experienced and then departed. A story weaved together, exploring edges for so long. Each building and building and building – to this life.

Those eyes, her eyes – I know those eyes. They are the eyes of dragons. The dragons I challenged in battles and wars. Some would best me, and some I would slay. Each clash would reveal the burning, bright eyes of a brilliant soul sharing deep reverence and admiration for the other. And … the dragons who were my dearest companions , brothers and sisters of the heart. The ones I rode on the backs of across so many starry nights and brilliant days; the ones I rode with into so many contests. Those eyes breathing Namaste.

The discoveries – a being crawling right from the rich dirt of this Earth, leading with a knowing, offering new sheaths of energetic ensembles. A child still with more to say and express. Water spirits of desire and power heard, but not felt. Beliefs to be released. Fullness and richness to be offered. A heart filled soul traveling the untrodden, but true path.

To the lady with the dragon eyes, I offer the breath of Namaste once again and a little Rumi.

Look at your eyes, how small they are, and yet they see mountains and stars and the infinite sky. In this circle of love the universe is one.
- Rumi

Zero Degrees Kelvin

This past week there was an article about scientists demonstrating a negative temperature in an experiment. Here’s the article - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/04/absolute-zero-record-setting-negative-temperature_n_2404666.html?utm_hp_ref=fb&src=sp&comm_ref=false.

A little background first – we usually think of temperature as a measure of hotness or coldness. It some ways it may be more accurate to say that temperature measures the amount of movement and interaction of molecules. If there’s no movement there’s no interaction. But when there is movement, there is interaction and every interaction involves a release of some energy as heat. Where there is absolutely no movement that is considered zero degrees Kelvin, where Kelvin comes from the scientist Lord Kelvin. The Kelvin scale and Celsius scale are closely tied where every 1 degree equates to 1 degree Kelvin, the different is that Celsius was meant to be more convenient and relatable to everyday interactions. Hence 0 degrees Celsius is the temperature at which water freezes or goes between solid and liquid, and 100 degrees Celsius is the temperature at which water changes between liquid and gas. Minus 273.15 degrees Celsius is equivalent to 0 degrees Kelvin.

As I’ve read more, like many topics, there are layers. Like when we learn physics equations seem in pure form, and then we learn about friction and other small factors that turn simple equations into complex formulas. The simple equations demonstrate the concepts which the full-blown equations are needed for more detailed areas. Temperature is like that as well where 0 degrees Kelvin is no translational movement in the classical model. Now I’m not sure what the classical model is, but there are clearly other dimensions of this.

Now the experiment used precise fields of lasers and magnetics to align molecules and generate a new energy state. This also begs the question – are our ideas of temperature wrong? Or need adjustment? And what about forces.

As I thought about this, I also wondered about force. There are four types of forces – gravity, electromagnetic, weak nuclear, and strong nuclear. The weak nuclear and strong nuclear are present within the nucleus of an atom. Gravity is an attraction between matter, and electromagnetic that is everywhere. Scientists don’t fully understand the mechanisms of these forces – how they work, how they exist, but clearly they do. Is it possible to have no movement or no energy while these forces exist? How is it that a single molecule could have no movement and no energy – after all it have the energy of the weak nuclear and strong nuclear force to hold it together? Or how is it that two molecules could remain completely stationary given there is a gravitational field between them?

I have no answers, only a curious mind that was blown open by this article and the idea of temperature loops and ‘negative’ temperatures. Science continues to amaze me!

Committing

Currently I’m on day 12 of 30 consecutive days of yoga. The inspiration came from a conversation at a Thanksgiving dinner when a woman I talked to briefly revealed that she had done 30 consecutive days of yoga and how profound it had been. At the time I didn’t think much of it, but it stuck in my body.

For about two weeks I didn’t think much of it, and then the idea returned. Soon I was having thoughts about doing so. I would look at yoga studio websites, I thought about getting some one-on-one coaching to help, I thought about intentions, and so on. The odd thing was I had never decided or committed to do this, yet it seemed like I was fully on the way to doing it. This got me to thinking about committing, and I thought of different types of committing. So here goes.

A goal

This, to me, would be the most common. You lay out a goal for yourself, a resolution perhaps, and then you go for it. It could be small or big, but it’s a goal. The endgame is the goal.

An announcement

This is a good one – this is when we announce to several people, or maybe the world, what we are going to do. It’s similar to a goal, but because we’ve announced it we are now on the hook and accountable to get it done. We don’t want to have to tell the story of why it didn’t happen. It has deep external motivators.

Prove something

This is one I have some experience with. It’s when we decide we are going to do something come hell or high water, we have something to prove. It’s a fighter’s fight. We go in headlong, full of steam and get it done. It’s a lot of energy and often doesn’t have the real results we want, but damnit we’ve proved what we could do.

Go with the flow

I would describe this as exactly what I experienced setting up for my yoga stretch. The idea stuck in my body, it seemed my soul wanted to go for it. I didn’t need to commit because it was already happening and I just had to ride the wave (and oh yeah, not resist).

All-in

This one is rarer, and it’s thrilling. This is where everything aligns – body, mind, spirit, soul, being – where everything all at once says with the biggest scream and smile – ‘I’m all in’. The word commit almost doesn’t even seem to be big enough for this. Whatever the idea or action, it has complete alignment.

I’m sure there are others – what else comes to mind for you? How else do you commit to something?

Balance ... or Alignment

Recently I realized that when I think of balance, I think an even split among all parts. So if there are two parts, it would be a 50/50 split. This seems reasonable – if I think of a scale, also known as a balance, it means there is equal weight on both sides. A teeter-totter can be balanced with equal weight. Even the concept of a center of gravity requires an even distribution of mass – 50% above, 50% below or 50% to the left and 50% to the right.

Without realizing the assumption I’ve made I’ve taken this idea of balance as 50/50 into my life. I’m not sure it’s working so well.

A common term lately is ‘work-life’ balance. Does that mean we’re supposed to be at work 50% of the time and at life the other 50%. That sort of makes sense even. Given there are 24 hours in a day, we roughly have an eight hour work day, roughly eight hours of sleep, leaving 8 hours for life. Not scientific by any means, but it has a point.

Balance in the sense of 50/50 also implies other combinations are possible, such as 60/40 or 30/70, which by the accounting might indicate something is out-of-balance when in fact it may be perfect. This out-of-balance also implies that one side has a gain while the other side has a loss. Not a very fruitful strategy in the long-run.

The word that has resonated lately as I’ve sat with this new realization of balance – is alignment. Alignment doesn’t imply any proportions and yet it seems far more suitable, and even relevant to so many more situations.

In terms of relationships, something I heard recently was about what each partner needs to bring to the relationship. It’s not that each partner brings 50% to create 100; it’s that each partner brings 100%. This is much more about aligning together than it is about balance. After all, balance is rarely going to occur anyway. One person is going to be physically stronger than the other, one person is probably better cook than the other. It probably wouldn’t be much fun if we were balanced. And certainly we don’t want a balance of masculine and feminine – there’s no polarity and no spark then.

Which brings me to a similar topic I’ve read recently. The idea of rebalancing the masculine and feminine again, that they are out of balance. I certainly agree that they are not in a good relationship now, but I don’t believe balance is what we want. We want alignment. We want the masculine to realign itself with its gold and light. We want the feminine to realign itself with its gold and light. And we want the masculine and feminine to realign themselves in relationship to each other.

David Whyte also writes about this in ‘The Three Marriages: Reimagining Work, Self, and Relationship.’ He writes, ‘Each of the three marriages is nonnegotiable. They cannot be “balanced” again one another – a little taken from this and little given to that – except at their very peripheries. To “balance” work with relationship and with the self means we only work harder in each marriage, while actually weakening each of them by separating them from one another. Each of the marriages represents a core conversation with life that seems necessary for almost all human beings and none of the marriages can be weakened or given up without a severe sense of internal damage.”

Whyte adds a critical piece of alignment, which is that for two (or more) things to align means they depend on each other in some way, that ‘internal damage.’ He goes on to talk about “the conversation between the marriages – the marriage of the marriages.” Again reinforcing the idea of interdependence among the components.

When each element of a system or a whole (and considering that each element itself is whole and a system unto itself) can be in alignment with itself and in a mutually supportive and reinforcing pattern with all the other elements, then you have alignment. Whyte again: “where each of the marriages can protect, embolden, and enliven the others and help keep us mutually honest, relevant, authentic, and alive.”

Picture a yogic posture, where each arm, each leg, the head, and the torso have a certain position to be in. They must all work together, each participating in the pose in its particular way and yet still supporting every other part.

Alignment is a good word, much better than balance. Balance just gets us in our head thinking about 50/50.

                Alignment – that gets us moving in a good direction.

30 Days of Yoga - Begins Now

At a Thanksgiving celebration I had a brief conversation with a woman there about yoga, which was our common connection with the host. In the conversation she said that at one point she had done 30 consecutive days of yoga and it had been quite profound. It was one thought that somehow didn’t seem to fit the conversation, but it was that one idea that has stuck with me ever since. It’s been ringing around in my head and perhaps moreso it’s been settling deeply into my body. I hadn’t committed to the idea, yet I seemed to be heading right down those tracks.

Yesterday I sat with Kirsten Warner for an hour as we talked about 30 consecutive days of yoga, what my intentions were, what I could focus on, what could help me. One question she asked was why. Why do 30 days of yoga, what did I want to get out of it? I related the conversation above, and part of my answer was curiosity. It some ways the question of why seems like asking why I’ve done all the extreme sports I’ve done. It’s because of a deeper resonance and a deeper calling. To touch and reach edges.

As the conversation progressed she said, ‘this will change your life.’ She offered this quote from John O’Donahue:

"Once you start to awaken, however, nothing or no one can ever claim you again, pull you back into old patterns. Once you start to awaken, you know how precious your time here—on earth, in this body—is. You are no longer willing to squander your essence on undertakings that do not nourish your true self; your patience grows thin with tired talk and dead language. You see through the rosters of expectation that promise you safety and the confirmations of your outer identity. Now you are impatient for growth, willing to put yourself in the way of change. You want your work to become an expression of your innate gifts. You want your relationships to voyage beyond the pallid frontiers to where the danger of transformation dwells. You want your God to be wild and to call you to where your destiny awaits."

So it is I’ve begun 30 days of yoga with a class this morning – with a sense of edginess, even a sense of fear, and a deep realizing that this is what’s right. I’m diving in on this auspicious Winter Solstice 2012 and galactic alignment.

One last thought before closing out this blog. As we finished the yoga class today, the song One by U2 played. The lyrics seemed right on for the moment and the day:

Is it getting better

Or do you feel the same

Will it make it easier on you now

You got someone to blame

You say...

One love

One life

When it's one need

In the night

One love

We get to share it

Leaves you baby if you

Don't care for it

Did I disappoint you

Or leave a bad taste in your mouth

You act like you never had love

And you want me to go without

Well it's...

Too late

Tonight

To drag the past out into the light

We're one, but we're not the same

We get to

Carry each other

Carry each other

One...

Have you come here for forgiveness

Have you come to raise the dead

Have you come here to play Jesus

To the lepers in your head

Did I ask too much

More than a lot

You gave me nothing

Now it's all I got

We're one

But we're not the same

Well we

Hurt each other

Then we do it again

You say

Love is a temple

Love a higher law

Love is a temple

Love the higher law

You ask me to enter

But then you make me crawl

And I can't be holding on

To what you got

When all you got is hurt

One love

One blood

One life

You got to do what you should

One life

With each other

Sisters

Brothers

One life

But we're not the same

We get to

Carry each other

Carry each other

One...life

One

A Little Indulgence

A few weeks ago a friend called and asked if she could do laundry at my house since her washer was broken, and I said sure. So she was at my house doing laundry, reading email, and doing the things she needed to do. I was preparing some dinner and asked my friend if she wanted something to drink or some Kefir, which is a fermented milk drink similar to yogurt. She said yes – so in trying to be a little mischievous and unconventional, I poured some Kefir in a wine glass and gave her that.

It turns out I was the one who was surprised because she said nothing about the wine glass, as if that was the most natural way to drink Kefir.

The moment stuck in my mind and over the past couple weeks when I want something to drink, whether it’s water, or a root beer, or Kefir, I often reach for a wine glass.

For most people, the wine glasses only come out when we have guests, or a special meal, or just for wine. It often signifies something different or something special is happening.

Really though why not offer ourselves the opportunity to feel special, to be special more often. It can be with our own family, or even by ourselves. I’m sure the French have some sense of this as wine is such a normal and special part of a day and a meal.

And really we don’t have to limit this to wine glasses – maybe we have fine china, or a special tablecloth, or shoes we only wear on special occasions. Why not celebrate more often?

So here’s a toast, with my wine glass full of water, to more celebration!

Intention

For a long time I’ve struggled with the idea of intention. Something seemed amiss and incomplete.

I’ve several books about intention and manifestation, including ‘The Secret’, and each time felt like there was something missing. I’ve come back to intention many times with the idea of discovering what intention is, how it works, what it means, what it means to me, and how to use it.

I finally found a concise version that makes perfect sense to me. It comes from the book ‘Calling in the One’ by Katherine Woodward Thomas. Here are the four parts:

1)      ‘a thought and/or belief in a particular possibility.’ You must know what you want and belief that it’s possible.

2)      ‘speak your intention out loud.’ Words have power and speaking them to others holds us accountable to what we really believe and want.

3)      ‘take actions that support the manifestation of your intention, and abstain from those that sabotage it.’ We must be willing to do something to get what we desire.

4)      ‘We must remain completely unattached to the outcomes that we are committed to creating.’

The fourth part is particularly powerful, and even paradoxical. We must live in a way that honors what we desire. We can be the captain of our ship and in command, but ultimately we can’t force anything on life, just as a sailor can’t pick the direction of the wind.

An intention is somewhat different from a goal which has definite ending and one we more often have control of. There is a similarity though – they must be realistic. We can have an intention or goal of running a marathon in 3 hours, but if we simply don’t have the physical makeup for that, no amount of faith or action will help. It’s okay to stretch as well to push yourself a little, and it still has to be realistic.

This simple pattern can be applied to anything from finding the perfect house to grilling the perfect salmon to meditation to driving. Time is irrelevant – living with integrity is not.

I summarized it in a poem

Intention is grounded in faith

    Spoken as truth

        Manifested through desire, power, and action.

Then released to the winds of time

    while we sail the vessel of our form with integrity.

Microsoft Rocks

I’ve played (worked J) for Microsoft for 15 of the past 21 years starting back in 1991 just after Windows 3.1 came out. At the time there were less than 5000 employees and Microsoft was not by any means a household name. When I was asked where I worked, few people recognized the name Microsoft. Since then Microsoft has had incredible success and incredible swings.

Despite all that I love about Microsoft, I honestly never thought I’d hear myself say Microsoft Rocks when referring to its technology and products. But it truly does!

Today though was the annual company meeting and I’ve seen almost all while I’ve been employed. Each one has its own flavor and I’ve been impressed by many, and was always awed at the thunderous standing ovation Bill Gates would receive.

This year though – this was the most amazing meeting I’ve ever seen by far!

Microsoft may not have the coolest looking products, or a cool name. It may come to the party late sometimes, miss opportunities, and be called a copy-cat. It may be considered a brute and still the 800-pound Gorilla.

I admire what other tech companies have done and their enthusiasm, dedication, and innovation and their people.

But …

No company on the planet has the depth and breadth of products that Microsoft has. You’d have to combine Apple, Google, Oracle, and VMWare and you still wouldn’t have what Microsoft has. Microsoft is striking out on its direction like never before, creating a new paradigm and array of connection like never before. The suite of technology, products, and services are astonishing, not just for what they are, but the people and ideas behind them. Skype, Xbox, Xbox Live, Windows 8, Surface, Outlook.com, Windows Phone, Office, Xbox games and that doesn’t even begin to talk about Enterprise Services and software. It’s all there and it’s all working together like never before. The long awaited seamless transition from tv to computer to laptop to phone to tablet and more is close at hand.

At heart I’m not a tech guy, but I love the people I play with and I love what I do. I am proud to work for Microsoft.

Microsoft Rocks!

The Mindset List

Beloit College is a small college in southern Wisconsin. 15 years ago Beloit College started a tradition called the Mindset List. The idea was to provide the professors and staff at Beloit College with an idea of what the incoming freshmen class knew about the world, that could be particularly different from the staff who could be twice or three times the age of these new students. Sort of a generational difference guide if you will.

Here’s an example for the class of 2015, most of whom were born in 1993 – music has always been available as a free download. The idea of downloadable music is still that new and yet it has become so pervasive so quickly.

Here’s another from the class of 2008, most of whom were born in 1986 – the Energizer bunny has always been going, and going, and going. And still is!

The lists start with the class of 2002 and go to the current class of 2015. They are a remarkable study of how things change, how quickly they change, how they become part of everyday life so readily, and even how quickly things are gone.

The full set of lists is here at Beloit College – take a trip down memory lane and enjoy!