# My Dinner with Andre - Author: Joichi Ito - Date: 2003-10-08T15:36:36Z Introspective note to self follows... I spent the day before yesterday with Jim and Boris talking about everything. About life and world views. The world is in an important transition, the Net is in an important transition and my life is in transition. The venture market is turning from a buyer's market to a seller's market. I'm moving from Tokyo to a home in Chiba with no city water, city sewage or gas. I'm in a point in my life where I am thinking deeply about what I really want to do, how I want to live my life and what matters to me. The discussion with Jim and Boris was really helpful. Later, I talked to Sarah, who is a lawyer, but also someone who is studying Sufism. She pushed back on my model and presented an amazingly thoughtful view on giving and receiving. I went to bed early and woke up at midnight. It reminded me of Bill Murray in Lost in Translation. I turned on my computer and tried to connect to the Internet through the hotel network and I got the message, "Sorry! Internet service is temporarily unavailable. Please try again later." I sat in bed thinking... Then I remembered the DVD of My Dinner with Andre that Jim had given me, so I popped it into the Powerbook. Amazing. It was an inspiring movie about a dinner conversation about life and being alive. And here I am. Thoughts swirling in my mind. Completely disconnected. Thinking about myself, my family, my friends, democracy, the world, and the laws of physics. Thinking about ethics, virtue, love, responsibility and life. Memories that are triggered: My Tai Ji teacher Chungliang Al Huang asking us why we're all in such a hurry. Why we love efficiently and speed so much. If the end of the game is death, the most efficient thing to do is die. The point is to live. "...and look at your house. You would see what an alien from another planet would see. You would see that you're living in the home of an insane robot." - Timothy Leary I don't want to be an insane robot... It's amazing how highly contextual thoughts become when you think without goals. How everything you hear seems to fit into your model yet pull things apart. I'm not going to try to explain what I'm thinking and I'm not sure if I'm going to post this entry. This is really a note to myself to remember this moment. --- #### Categories Introspective