If you bounce a tennis ball against a wall it will come back to you the same way every time. But if you shift the wall a few degrees it will come back another way.
Tom ShadyacI wasn't big in the party scene but I did have an excessive lifestyle. I had much more than I needed. I think that was a manifestation of a certain kind of mental illness.
Tom ShadyacLook at native cultures - they've lasted for tens of thousands of years, not doing everything right. We wouldn't want to emulate them in many ways, but their basic philosophies - being a part of nature, a part of a tribe or group without elevating, not what you call dominator philosophies - they lasted for tens of thousands of years. It took us to come and put them asunder.
Tom ShadyacOur culture does not teach us this, but what happens in Vegas does not stay in Vegas. If you cheat in Vegas, it comes right home with you. If you cheat in Vegas, you walk home as a cheater. You lie awake at a night a cheater. You cannot escape it.
Tom ShadyacAs I "won," I didn't feel the fruits of that. I felt the fruits when I served others, when I gave myself away. . . . I've always seen my life as an experiment. I just want to go to what works. As I felt the charity aspect in my life, the giving aspect, I felt a power and I've walked more into that.
Tom ShadyacThe way I think we were living is an invention. The truth is nobody can own anything. That was an unheard-of concept among indigenous people. We invented that.
Tom ShadyacCommunism didn't work because people weren't ready for it, it was corrupt, and because it squelched individualism.
Tom ShadyacNature is an incredible cooperative. When things operate outside of that cooperative, they die off. It's a very simple rule that nature operates under.
Tom ShadyacTRUTH: When a child believes he must win to be worthy, when young adults define themselves by what they do and not who they are, it is a kind of slavery a slave master would envy.
Tom ShadyacYou can't sow an apple seed and expect to get an avocado tree. The consequences of your life are sown in what you do and how you behave.
Tom ShadyacOur own economy tells us to take as much as we can get, right? Our own economy says, you're going to be the most successful graduate if you go into the business world and take as much you can get. That's not how nature works. Nature has a much simpler economy. Everything in nature takes what it needs. That's it. You don't see an oak tree gathering up all the resources. An oak tree takes what it needs to be the authentic oak tree it is.
Tom ShadyacIf we exchange bombs for bread there will be less reason for wanting to kill us. I just want to have the conversation.
Tom ShadyacWe're a young species; We're only 175,000 years old. On the evolutionary scale, life on this planet is 4 billion years old. We're 175,000 years old. So we're trying something out. Who wouldn't think it would be better to have the most stuff to take as much as you could? As we do that, we see why the moral prophets come along and say, don't even store into barns, right? It's easier for a camel to pass through the eye of the needle than a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. We've seen we plunder nature. We plunder our neighbor. We create enemies because we're against each other.
Tom ShadyacThe one thing that advances a society is not technology or so-called development; its love - that one principle.
Tom ShadyacI hope people start to look at their lives as the most powerful, creative act they will ever offer this world.
Tom ShadyacWe started by asking what’s wrong with the world, and we ended up discovering what’s right with it.
Tom ShadyacTheres one fundamental law that all of nature obeys that mankind breaks every day. Now, this is a law thats evolved over billions of years, and the law is this: Nothing in nature takes more than it needs.
Tom ShadyacI have not walked away from Hollywood. I'm walking away from the way I personally did business in Hollywood. The budget of whatever movie I do needs to be efficient; it needs to consider what kind of resources we're using and how to be as responsible as possible.
Tom ShadyacFear represents our need to hang on to the riverbank, to control outcomes, results, our lives; it swims upstream. Truth is about releasing that hold, letting go of results, and trusting the direction of Life’s current.
Tom ShadyacIllnesses are often times a reflection of an emotional place that needs healing or attention.
Tom ShadyacLove is not always about ‘everything’s fine’…love is about truth. Truth and love are one in the same. It doesn’t always come in a sweet little box with a bow on it.
Tom ShadyacI'm from the Madeleine L'Engle school. The more she delves into science, the more she knows there's a creator who's behind these amazing laws, these amazing events. The symmetry of nature, the structure and order of it.
Tom ShadyacI don't consider anything I'm doing as generous. In the new model of the world, I hope people will consider whatever I'm doing as just normal.
Tom ShadyacI come from a family of lawyers. I was expected to be a professional of some sort, not an artist. I was never uplifted for my art.
Tom ShadyacThe word contentment comes from the word content, which is what we hold inside - love, value, a feeling of a life that has meaning or purpose, a cause greater than yourself that you're a part of. These are the things that bring true happiness. As a culture, I think we need to redefine what it means to be happy.
Tom ShadyacI didn't want to hear the usual answers about what's wrong because I believe these are symptoms: global warming, genocide, hunger, poverty, war, environmental crisis. If we can identify the root cause, we can change our ways.
Tom ShadyacI was always kind of finding humor to be an access point to the conversation, to a pain relief, if you will. My mother was in a wheelchair since I was very young, so she was in pain and we used humor.
Tom ShadyacI was raised Catholic and didn't like the dogma and exclusivity of that teaching but I was moved by the moral teachings and by the power of the Jesus fellow.
Tom ShadyacThe bike accident caused me to start talking about spiritual truths. This accident - where I faced my own death - compelled me to talk about these truths and try to make a movie about them.
Tom ShadyacThe mystics will tell you death is perfectly safe. A violent act will beget a violent act; it is simply a law.
Tom ShadyacIn movies you can shoot a guy 3,000 times and get a 'PG-13', but if you say the 'F' word twice it's automatically an 'R'. I'll let that be its own comment.
Tom ShadyacI love Frank Capra. He believed in the goodness of people and one man's ability to fight and often triumph.
Tom ShadyacNature actually works through intense cooperation. There is competition in nature , but it thrives through cooperation. We don't teach this to our kids. It's actually a violent ideology. It's why kids go into school and bully each other and god forbid do things even worse. Cooperation will become the marching orders of the human species or we're not going to make it.
Tom ShadyacMy dad's half-Lebanese, my mom is full Lebanese. I'm three-quarters Lebanese. Irish-Lebanese.
Tom ShadyacWhen an individual changes in even a small way he immediately changes the world around him. And that concentric circle moves out and changes everything.
Tom ShadyacI wasn't paying enough attention to what my heart was telling me. When I paid attention and got the message, I could move forward and heal.
Tom ShadyacLove is the essential energy of the universe. It is the force that puts the stars in the firmament, and it makes the blood run through the veins.
Tom ShadyacI am operating under the philosophy that I will simply use what I need and the rest - even if I still have it somewhere - is not mine. It is others'. It is for the healing of the natural world. And it is in the process of returning.
Tom Shadyac