The Highlight Reel of Life

In addition to its role as an idea-aggregator and business tool, this blog is beginning to spark thoughts of a multi-media project (book, DVD, audio recording…let’s see where it goes). Because of that, I spend some time re-reading it to tie together some of the ideas I randomly spew forth within.

Friday’s post about Costco got me thinking about the earlier post about Surprise afterlife, and while watching an ingenious TV show during my cardio workout this morning, they all merged into an epiphany.

To explain, the TV show is called “30 Moments/30 Minutes.” Essentially it’s 30 great moments from the world of sports, categorized and broken down into three sets of 10, and played out over a half-hour. This morning’s episode showed 10 “Plays of the Week,” 10 eye-popping hockey saves and 10 messed-up soccer goals from international archives over the past 20 years or so. All the fat has been trimmed away to leave viewers with the uttermost high of highlights. It’s simple, but superb, television.

So, the connection? I realized that more than merely a collection of long-living stories, great Surprises provide us with what I call “The Highlight Reel of Life” (well, that’s what I call it now, after hours of trying to come up with a suitable tag).

Think about it. Think back to the great Surprise moments in your life, the highlights you STILL talk about. Not just the bargains or exquisite service, but the unexpected visit from a friend, the Surprise birthday party, the time your spouse’s simple haircut became a high-flying Afro perm, the $100 bill you found in the street…

I could go on and on, but the point here is that hopefully, so can you.

I can’t help but thinking how great it would be to actually bring  The Highlight Reel of Life to a physical reality! Never mind a photo album; imagine a DVD or disc drive filled with the great Surprise moments in your life, captured real-time in chronological order. According to (yet another) fascinating article in this month’s Fast Company, the cover story about Microsoft’s Gordon Bell and his digitally-never-forget-anything “My Life Bits” project, this may not be as far-fetched, far-out or far-off as you think.

Until then, The Highlight Reel of Life can live virtually, stored in your memory banks. Keep collecting!