Even if I don’t develop special abilities of the sort where I can move stuff with my mind, one thing is definitely developing after starting ESP1; the ability to look somebody in the eyes and to know exactly when they have an interesting story to tell about their life, what they feel, whether they are being honest, etc.
People who I’d usually dismiss as normal boring people, suddenly pulls me closer and I want to hear everything they have to say. It happened again tonight at a live concert, just started chatting to some random dude and eventually it came out that he was the sound engineer for the concert. The chilled out dude with the massive crystal around his neck was the owner of the place, the other dude had great potential to be the lead vocalist of a band (his band broke up, so he was looking for a new band to join). The bar ladies all had an interesting story to tell and found it really weird that I’m not drinking like everyone. Met an old school buddy there as well whom I haven’t seen in five years, seems he’s also stuck in a cubicle and screaming to get out like most people who end up doing software development / engineering and he actually wants to work with people. He wouldn’t be the first, had a chat with quite a few other developers over the last week, ranging from beginners to seniors and all of them have a similar wish, to get out of their cubicle and actually enjoy a stress-free life.
Afterwards, when I went out of the club to my car, the car guard had a look in his eyes as if he wanted to share something of value, maybe some wisdom, or something else. We started chatting and about 30 minutes later (after talking about engines, boosting them, putting hydrogen injectors into really small cars, etc), he opened up and shared that he was an electric engineer once upon a time, then alcohol and drugs totally messed up his life, his friend died from too much vodka. He told me that this time he is starting life all over again, only this time he’s going to be sober. “The human body as well as life is fragile, it takes one bad decision to end it all …”, he said and looking in his eyes, I saw that he really meant what he was saying while there was a touch of sadness at the same time.
Wow, what a moving experience, to be able to feel exactly what somebody else is feeling and knowing that it’s not your own feelings and being able to objectively look at it as if it’s a marble you can observe without it having an effect on your own emotional state (unless you allow it to).
I guess this ability that is unlocking is called empathy and what I’ve learned from this experience is that everyone finds their own life boring, but just showing a little bit of interest in their life, you really brighten up their day / night as everyone wants to feel needed or special even if it’s just a little bit.
