The Little Bird
Monday, June 26, 1995 by Dave Winer.
Hot Hot Hot 
Man! Is it hot enough for you? Whew. Sometimes I think I can't handle it, but then I think of Jamaica, where my uncle lives, where it's this hot 365 days a year.
When you're in Jamaica the rastas come hang out with you on your porch. For fun I told my rasta friend about another friend of mine from New London, Wisconsin, who likes to get drunk on Point beer in the wintertime and plow his car into huge snowdrifts. What's a snowdrift, mon? Oh well.
So on hot days I dream about snowdrifts in Wisconsin and Jamaican rastas. It helps me chill out.
Interactive website trial run
My interactive website is on the air! It's a trial run to see if the multi-user stuff is working. So I'm inviting lots of traffic onto my system. If you have a web browser and want to participate in the trial run, jump to http://204.119.90.243/bbs.welcome.fcgi
Important: if you sign on, please leave a message in the Scratchpad section. To really burn this stuff in I need people to create lots of messages.
Other facts: It's running on a PowerMac 8100 with WebStar 1.1. The ISDN connection can be a problem so please try again. The bbs will go off the air in a few days, this is a limited time offer. Act now!
To those that doubt that a Macintosh makes a great WWW server, check it out. My interactive website is very fast! People assume that it's the Mac's fault that the Apple Event Manager is so slow. Not true. We got around the problem in Frontier. This is new tech stuff. Look twice. Don't blink! Yes that really is a Mac.
Let's do a time capsule!
The web is so darned dynamic. It's cool.
But what trails will historians have 100 years from now of the initial boom of growth that launched online as a fundamental form of human communication?
Solution: I'd like to participate in a quick project to freeze the worldwide web on January 1, 1996, back it up, and bury the hard disk. Transmit the archive to the nearest solar system that might have intelligent life.
Isn't this a neat idea? What do you think? I think it's juicy.
---
The Little Bird
This DaveNet essay comes courtesy of Annie Lennox. I've got her "Little Bird" song from the Diva album in repeat mode running on the PowerPC that's also running my bbs. Annie is angry! She teaches us that (my my my) you reap what you sow. It's another way of saying what goes around comes around. That's one of life's big lessons. Annie expresses it very well.
I have my own Little Bird song. What if a little bird landed on your shoulder and whispered in your ear, "you can have anything you want." What would you ask for? Another adage applies. Be careful what you ask for, you might just get it.
In fact, I think that little bird is always perched there, always giving us exactly what we want. The key to being happy is to just want good things for yourself. Know what your inner self wants, really wants, and ask for it.
So many people want money. What they're really asking for is security. White picket fences. But I think very few inner children are satisfied with the fences. At one point in my life I thought I wanted money. So I got it. It took me five years to figure out that security is an illusion. Go ahead, get the white picket fences. I got mine! But until I was ready to grow again, to become more than my money-wishes had imagined for me, my world was black and white. My inner child threw a three year tantrum. "This isn't what I wanted!" screamed the little boy inside of me.
So many people waste so many years trying to ignore the little child. Our parents told us to grow up. That really means stop listening to yourself! That's what our parents wanted to do, to stop listening to themselves. If they listened to their children they'd have to listen to themselves. A vicious cycle. If we're not very careful we pass it on to our kids.
I can't speak for *your* child, but mine now speaks very clearly to me. What does my little boy want? Love, play, creativity, fun, freedom, sharing. These things make me happy. Not scared of living. Thriving and accomplishing. Part of the world. Smiling and humming, rolling and flowing, deep and rich, even if something "bad" just happened. Material value doesn't show up in this equation. I don't look at my balance sheet for a clue to how happy I am. It isn't what you have, it's how much fun you have, that makes you rich.
It's nice that as I've lived more, I now understand what singers are singing about. Why flowers are so pretty. Why even a blistering hot summer day offers so many opportunities for fun and learning.
Take-away message: The little bird is you. Listen!
Let's have fun!
Dave