Each night a man carries a bag of dreams on his back and stops at homes throughout the world, leaving dreams for the sleepers. What are some of the dreams that are in his bag? Why does he do what he does?

In his short story, ”The Relive Box,” author T. Coraghessan Boyle writes about a machine that allows people to relive past moments in their lives that they want to return to, such as a time when they fell in love with someone or when they were very young and wanted to be with their parents. If you had such a relive box in your home, what moments would you like to return to?

You invent a new ”interactive” T-shirt to wear that can become your personal electronic billboard. The shirt can be programmed to flash your personal message to the world. The message can change whenever you wish to reflect your different moods and feelings. On a typical day, as you do different things and visit different places, what are some of the messages your shirt would convey?

You alone have the power to change the world and make it perfect, the way you always wanted it to be. You can change people or create new forms of life. You can make the world reflect your own sense of beauty, your own values and beliefs. What kind of brave new world would emerge?

In her poem, ‘’The Summer Day,’’ Mary Oliver writes about making time to look at all the beauty of the world, even to kneel in the grass to look at insects, or to walk through the fields and enjoy the day without hurrying. Life is very short – ‘’Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?’’ she asks (read her poem at: http://www.loc.gov/poetry/180/133.html).

And then she ends her poem with two amazing lines to form the question:

‘’Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?’’

So, dear writer, tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? What do want to accomplish in your lifetime? What things do you want to do before you die? What things do you want to see before you leave this life? Which person do you want to love? What do you want to taste before you die? What do you want to achieve?

 

An electronic game designer develops an app for mobile phones that in short time becomes extremely popular — people can’t stop playing with it. Then, suddenly, the developer takes down, or removes, the app from public use because, he says, it is having a negative effect on the players. He says that the game caused players unexpected addiction — something that he could not bear to see.

What about you — can you develop an app that people would want to use all the time? What would it do? What would you call it?