Your Baseline

Last night, I had the pleasure of hearing Max Stossel perform poetry at a Sofar Sounds show. He’s a renowned poet and storyteller from New York who shared intricate poems about subway love, challenging our reality baseline and overcoming the lack of human, intimate connection we have with modern technology. He even talked about the human vs. dog perspective at a dog park. He tricked me into laughing while holding onto his every single word just to make sure....wait a second no way he could make that..…oh damn. He somehow made that rhyme. It all rhymed. And it meant something profound at the same time. (See what I did there?)

I was particularly struck by his piece on our reality baseline. Who really comes up with the established “norm” of reality aka our baseline? If the majority of the subway is just people reading their phones, the paper, etc, but that one seemingly crazy dude is laughing and having a conversation with an imaginary dinosaur, who’s to say that our baseline of reality isn’t crazy to him? Just because the majority sees it the way I do, doesn’t mean it’s true. If we all altered our perspective to see other peoples’ altering perspectives, it creates a domino effect of meaningful connection.

Don’t stay stuck on a baseline that was created for you. There’s a lot more to explore.