"Mommy, I just know that that's not real."
"What's not real?"
"Bending spoons. People can't really do that."
"Actually, some people can."
"Have you ever seen anyone doing it?"
"Well, no..."
"Then how do you know it's real?"
"I don't know, I just do. Let's Google it."
Step 1: Think of an event with some extreme emotion attached to it. First kiss, first performance, something vivid.
Step 2: Concentrate on that emotion while holding the spoon (or not holding it, that's personal preference). Tell the spoon repeatedly to bend. ("Bend, bend, bend, bend...") If you need to shout or make other noises to help you with channelling the emotion then you can do so.
Step 3: Spoon will bend. Supposedly.
As I go to the drawer to get out a cheap-o spoon, Julian, my seven-year-old son, isn't even paying attention to me anymore. He has gone back to watching his cartoons. I stare at the spoon, thinking of all the emotional stuff I can possibly think of, making faces which are indescribable. The boy has asked me a question, I'm going to do my best to show him the answer. How cool would it be if I could say: "Yes Julian, humans CAN bend spoons with their minds, and I can prove it. Watch me do this."
Unfortunately, my attention span is way too short to stare at any spoon for long enough to make it bend this way. I tried for a while, but the thought of myself making strange faces and staring at a 25p spoon while also whispering to it was just too distracting for me to concentrate on my emotional output. So I put the spoon down and walked away. Perhaps I should have tried for longer and got angry with the spoon, now that's some emotional energy that should be easier to harness!
While I may not be a spoon-bending expert at first (or second, or third-ish... okay so maybe I've attempted this a lot, so what?) attempt, there is still further evidence I have experienced first-hand that emotional energy can have a noticable effect on material objects. This isn't just the normal threw-the-thing-at-someone kind of effect, I see no point in discussing the obvious, but a real, unexplainable effect on something. You ready? Get this:
During a very emotional time in my life, I was upset to the point of shaking and sobbing and hyperventilating. I was extremely angry and distraught, speaking to a friend of mine on a cell phone for support. I honestly do not recall ever being so upset before this point, and this was a relatively brand new Motorola I was using, that I hadn't even dropped yet! I ended the call with my friend and closed the phone in the usual fashion, not smashing it or anything because I wasn't angry with the thing itself, and that was the last time my phone ever worked properly. When I went to open the phone again, it was frozen, permanently. None of the buttons or functions worked, not even when I took it to the phone shop to have it fixed. They tried all their tricks, but they were stumped.
I wholeheartedly believe that my emotional energy broke the phone. I may be biased because I was raised by a hippie who can do some weird things or because I grew up listening to Coast to Coast radio, but I tend to be a skeptic more often than not so that can't be the whole reason I am so sure of this. I am mainly a realist, always searching for the most simple answer. In this case, my answer does feel like the most simple answer.
See, emotions are very powerful. Hence, when you go to a really great movie that "moves" you and makes you cry, critics will have proclaimed it a "powerful" film. And it is my personal belief that humans have a much larger potential than we think. With enough passion, amazing things can happen. People lifting cars off the ground to save children, things like that. Einstein shared in this belief, saying: "If we all did the things we are capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves." Perhaps he, too, would have enjoyed Coast to Coast AM if it had been around in his day.
I already know how channelling my emotions can affect other people, like in fourth grade when I was an actress in the play at our church. Heaven's Gates, Hell's Flames was the title, and I was so good at making everyone cry with my scene that the directors, who routinely took the production on tour, taped my performance to train all future little actresses to do it properly. It was no effort to me at all at that time, to turn on the histrionics and plead for the angel to save my stagemother's soul, I said every word as if it were coming from my own heart. And not even the manliest of men, (who I have known for twenty years and have never seen let out even a hint of moisture from his eye) dressed as an archangel and trying to remember his own lines, could resist the waterworks. I was an eight year old girl, making packed audiences sob their hearts out night after night. Some people may have even changed their whole lives as a result, and if that's not emotional energy creating movement then I don't know what is.
But a spoon? Use emotion to bend a spoon? Well, now that's a little different. Most of the strong emotions we feel are usually in more serious settings than staring crosseyed at flatware, and it is in those other settings that amazing things usually happen. So to be able to direct such energy at a spoon would require intense concentration, something I'm not sure either of us can manage on a Saturday morning.
While I ponder how I am going to go about explaining the whole concept of harnessing emotional energy to Julian, he is already going into the kitchen to find a spoon for himself to bend. He doesn't know I'm watching, but I observe quietly as his face contorts while he whispers, "Bend, bend, bend bend..." If he is anything like me, which I know he is, this will not be his last attempt.
"What's not real?"
"Bending spoons. People can't really do that."
"Actually, some people can."
"Have you ever seen anyone doing it?"
"Well, no..."
"Then how do you know it's real?"
"I don't know, I just do. Let's Google it."
Step 1: Think of an event with some extreme emotion attached to it. First kiss, first performance, something vivid.
Step 2: Concentrate on that emotion while holding the spoon (or not holding it, that's personal preference). Tell the spoon repeatedly to bend. ("Bend, bend, bend, bend...") If you need to shout or make other noises to help you with channelling the emotion then you can do so.
Step 3: Spoon will bend. Supposedly.
As I go to the drawer to get out a cheap-o spoon, Julian, my seven-year-old son, isn't even paying attention to me anymore. He has gone back to watching his cartoons. I stare at the spoon, thinking of all the emotional stuff I can possibly think of, making faces which are indescribable. The boy has asked me a question, I'm going to do my best to show him the answer. How cool would it be if I could say: "Yes Julian, humans CAN bend spoons with their minds, and I can prove it. Watch me do this."
Unfortunately, my attention span is way too short to stare at any spoon for long enough to make it bend this way. I tried for a while, but the thought of myself making strange faces and staring at a 25p spoon while also whispering to it was just too distracting for me to concentrate on my emotional output. So I put the spoon down and walked away. Perhaps I should have tried for longer and got angry with the spoon, now that's some emotional energy that should be easier to harness!
While I may not be a spoon-bending expert at first (or second, or third-ish... okay so maybe I've attempted this a lot, so what?) attempt, there is still further evidence I have experienced first-hand that emotional energy can have a noticable effect on material objects. This isn't just the normal threw-the-thing-at-someone kind of effect, I see no point in discussing the obvious, but a real, unexplainable effect on something. You ready? Get this:
During a very emotional time in my life, I was upset to the point of shaking and sobbing and hyperventilating. I was extremely angry and distraught, speaking to a friend of mine on a cell phone for support. I honestly do not recall ever being so upset before this point, and this was a relatively brand new Motorola I was using, that I hadn't even dropped yet! I ended the call with my friend and closed the phone in the usual fashion, not smashing it or anything because I wasn't angry with the thing itself, and that was the last time my phone ever worked properly. When I went to open the phone again, it was frozen, permanently. None of the buttons or functions worked, not even when I took it to the phone shop to have it fixed. They tried all their tricks, but they were stumped.
I wholeheartedly believe that my emotional energy broke the phone. I may be biased because I was raised by a hippie who can do some weird things or because I grew up listening to Coast to Coast radio, but I tend to be a skeptic more often than not so that can't be the whole reason I am so sure of this. I am mainly a realist, always searching for the most simple answer. In this case, my answer does feel like the most simple answer.
See, emotions are very powerful. Hence, when you go to a really great movie that "moves" you and makes you cry, critics will have proclaimed it a "powerful" film. And it is my personal belief that humans have a much larger potential than we think. With enough passion, amazing things can happen. People lifting cars off the ground to save children, things like that. Einstein shared in this belief, saying: "If we all did the things we are capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves." Perhaps he, too, would have enjoyed Coast to Coast AM if it had been around in his day.
I already know how channelling my emotions can affect other people, like in fourth grade when I was an actress in the play at our church. Heaven's Gates, Hell's Flames was the title, and I was so good at making everyone cry with my scene that the directors, who routinely took the production on tour, taped my performance to train all future little actresses to do it properly. It was no effort to me at all at that time, to turn on the histrionics and plead for the angel to save my stagemother's soul, I said every word as if it were coming from my own heart. And not even the manliest of men, (who I have known for twenty years and have never seen let out even a hint of moisture from his eye) dressed as an archangel and trying to remember his own lines, could resist the waterworks. I was an eight year old girl, making packed audiences sob their hearts out night after night. Some people may have even changed their whole lives as a result, and if that's not emotional energy creating movement then I don't know what is.
But a spoon? Use emotion to bend a spoon? Well, now that's a little different. Most of the strong emotions we feel are usually in more serious settings than staring crosseyed at flatware, and it is in those other settings that amazing things usually happen. So to be able to direct such energy at a spoon would require intense concentration, something I'm not sure either of us can manage on a Saturday morning.
While I ponder how I am going to go about explaining the whole concept of harnessing emotional energy to Julian, he is already going into the kitchen to find a spoon for himself to bend. He doesn't know I'm watching, but I observe quietly as his face contorts while he whispers, "Bend, bend, bend bend..." If he is anything like me, which I know he is, this will not be his last attempt.
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