If We Didn't Try to Hold the Flux

Surviving DC, July 22, 2002

"It's a tension, I think, because what both science and at least some philosophical and even religious traditions tell us is that the world is impermanent. Nothing in it stays the same. We don't stay the same. Our bodies don't stay the same. The people that we love and the things that we love don't stay the same. That's just the truth of the matter, that there's this constant impermanence, this constant flux. And some philosophers have argued over the years that we should just embrace that. We would be freer if we didn't try to hold that flux for a moment. 

I have to say, my feeling about it is, part of what makes everything so precious to us is exactly the fact that we know it's going to disappear. We know it's impermanent. We know it won't last. But what we love is this thing now. For me, the most dramatic example of this is our relationship to our children. We know they're going to go. We know that in twenty years from now, if they treat us with affectionate contempt we'll be doing really well. But that doesn't change the fact that right now, it's this child and not any other child in the universe. Just this one.

I think there's something really deep and profound about our human lives that the fact that we can do both of those things--we recognize the impermanence, but that we feel the attachments--that seems to me to give our life its very special texture."  

~ Alison Gopnik, from "Object Lesson," Radiolab, Season 12: Episode 8

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See also: 

• Gopnik, A. (2009). The philosophical baby: What children's minds tell us about truth, love, and the meaning of life. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. (library)
• Instincts

I'm Not Sitting Still

"I'm not just sitting here doing nothing. I'm actually fighting against earth's gravity. And I'm not sitting still. I'm spinning—a thousand miles per hour—or even more than that!" 

~ Xiangjun Shi

Why Do I Study Physics? (2013) from Xiangjun Shi on Vimeo.

The Important Thing

 Leonard Mlodinow, from "Randomness and Choice," OnBeing with Krista Tippett, April 30, 2014:

When you look at your life, if you had to sit down and think about, and I'm talking about in detail, not just the headlines, if you think about all the details of what happened to you, you will find that there was a time where you had the extra cup of coffee, where if you hadn't, you wouldn't have met Person A.

When I look back in my life, I could find so many instances like that. And I had fun tracing some of them. And the course of your life depends on how you react to those opportunities and challenges that the randomness presents to you.

If you're awake and paying attention, you will find that things happen. They might seem good, they might seem bad but the important thing is how you reacted to it.

Dandelion seeds are dispersed by the wind.

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See also: "Stochasticity," Radiolab, 

The Preparation for Those Moments is Your Life

"If you view crossing the finish line as the measure of your life, you’re setting yourself up for a personal disaster. There are very very very few people who win gold at the Olympics. And if you say, ‘if I don’t win gold then I’m a failure or I’ve let somebody down or something...’

What if you win a silver? What if you win a bronze? What if you come fourth? What if your binding comes apart?

What if all of those millions of things that happen in life happen...

Only a few people that go there are going to win gold. And it’s the same in some degree I think in commanding a spaceship or doing a spacewalk it is a very rare, singular moment-in-time event in the continuum of life.

And you need to honour the highs and the peaks in the moments — you need to prepare your life for them — but recognize the fact that the preparation for those moments is your life and, in fact, that’s the richness of your life...

The challenge that we set for each other, and the way that we shape ourselves to rise to that challenge, is life."

~ Chris Hadfield, Canadian astronaut 

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See also: 

• Hadfield, C. (2013). An astronaut's guide to life on Earth. http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/861187010
• Adams, S. (2013). How to fail at almost everything and still win big: Kind of the story of my life. http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/842209207 (systems over goals)

The Universe is in Us

Astrophysicist Dr. Neil DeGrasse Tyson was asked in an interview with TIME magazine, "What is the most astounding fact you can share with us about the Universe?" This is his answer.

The Most Astounding Fact from Max Schlickenmeyer on Vimeo.

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See also:

• 10 Questions for Neil DeGrasse Tyson
• I Sing the Body Electric (Walt Whitman)
• I Sing the Body Electric (Fame)