We are ALL Dr. Babooner
Dear Dr. Babooner,
I’m no Albert Einstein, but I just found out I can rifle around in his life by going through his papers online. This includes not only his work in physics, but his personal papers too, including love letters and notes to friends. I can even toggle back and forth between German and English language versions of Einsteinian detritus.
This is thrilling and frightening to me because I’ve long been an Einstein fan and I’ve always wanted to be just like him, in spite of the fact that I have no real intellectual abilities.
Whenever a difficult problem has presented itself, I’ve backed down from it with Einstein as my excuse.
After all, I’m no him.
I say this a lot.
Now I’m concerned that if I explore Einstein’s life too deeply, I’ll find out that he and I are more alike than I thought and maybe I AM him! Ā I’m tormented by the notion that I could have been the Einstein of today but now I have fallen far behind him on the creation of a personal archive that might someday be worthy of an online library.
Dr. Babooner, should I look at the Einstein papers, or remain comfortable with my failure?
Conflictedly,
I’m Not Einstein
I told I.N.E. that the probability of discovering through these papers that you could have been “The Einstein of Today” is pretty slim – not mathematically impossible but almost. The real issue in front of you is a time-space quandary. An expansion in the amount of time you spend going through Einstein’s papers will have an inverse effect on the velocity with which you are able to live your own life. But that’s just one opinion.
What do you think, Dr. Babooner?
Trail Baboon 
Reblogged this on VIVIMETALIUN.
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I think you said it well, Dale – and since the velocity of life in early December can’t be matched any other time of the year, that’s all I have to say about that. š
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Just a theory INE, but maybe you should ask your relatives.
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Clyde – you just made me snort my lemonade up my nose!
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Good morning. As a big fan of Einstein, I’m Not Einstein, I think you should check out his papers. You don’t have to be obsessed with looking at those papers and you don’t have to compare yourself to him. Try to calm down. Can you do that? If you can’t calm down and not get carried away with comparing yourself to Einstien, I don’t recommend that you check out his papers.
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You should never spend egregious amounts of time doing ANYTHING if the only possible outcome will surely be negative. Now if you are fascinated by the idea that someone with the statue of Einstein could be understood to be just a human being (albeit a really really smart one), then head into the papers.
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stature of Einstein. sigh.
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Yu need to stroke your creative side, INE. Search through the papers to find the most enigmatic yet rhythmic parts. Name your self EMCC and release a rap album.
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To my way of thinking, vs has it just right. Life presents us with countless decisions. Should I go for a run this morning or sleep in? Shall I confront a loved one with my deepest fears about the way she is living? Shall I order the duck or the pork entree? Should I continue living in the place I love most, or should I move near the people I love most?
There is an art to making decisions well, or maybe we should say an art and a science. To make the right choices it is critical that we know a lot about life, but it is just as critical that we know ourselves so we correctly anticipate how we will respond to different choices. I sometimes think of this as the ultimate challenge of life: knowing enough about the world and one’s self to be able to make decisions that ultimately work well.
INE needs to reflect on his personality and values. Will learning more about Einstein make him stronger, wiser and more capable of facing life successfully? Or will he be diminished by not measuring up when compared to his hero? I’d never tell him which way to go. I just hope he knows himself well enough to do what will work for him. And if he chooses a course that kicks back at him, I hope he is able to avoid the destructive vortex of regret and instead use the bad choice as a good lesson.
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Print pages of the papers in which he works things out and sell them in a kit along with instructions on how to fold paper airplanes. Call it Flights of Fancy. Do another set of pages in which he does not solve problems and call it Flights of Futility.
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do it. it will sell
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Print out pages on greens, yellow, oranges, dark browns. Cut and fold the papers into a collage of ripe corn. Call it “The Unified Field.”
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My brain has been in fight-or-flight/autonomic state since ten last night and will not turn off. I have pain off the chart.
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Sorry that your pain results in pleasure for the rest of us (your words and humor). My clients will be here in about an hour, so I am about to change from carefree tourist to site inspection director. This is the first time in 25 years that I’ve been sick during a site (end of a bad cold, but gross just the same) and I am extremely irritable about it. I have 90 minutes to get over myself.
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Been in that situation. When I started as a teacher I took my mood/state-of-mind and health into the classroom. I learned to switch that off. I only once in all my presentations was anything but professional. Go get ’em
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no tricks up your sleeve. good luck beating the demons clyde. your brain is working well in spite of the pain. take the ideas that come to you while you are unable to fully develop the and write thenm down for guest blogs later. i think you do well considering how poorly you feel
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I am not Einstein either. What a burden! I am transcending time and space today by playing in the bell choir in Medora, ND for Cowboy Christmas, then heading to Fargo so I can attend the Concordia Christmas Concert tomorrow afternoon. Husband is in Minot today, playing his cello in a wedding, and will head to Fargo tonight after the reception. Next weekend we head to Pine Ridge into another dimension to distribute Christmas presents and provide Christmas music at a Baptist mission. It looks like the weather is going to hold.
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We went to Mr. Tuxedo’s elementary school “Winter Concert” Tuesday. The district includes about half of the Sioux Agency reservation, the only Sioux (yes, that is right, they call themselves Sioux) in MN not sent to Pine Ridge. Lots of the Native-Americans do not have their children in the concert. But that peppering of round, olive-skinned faces with vibrant black hair is a stunning contrast to all the pasty Northern European kids. The spring concert has many more Native-American kids in it because it is not Christmas-associated. The youngest children mostly in the audience yet, are showing many mixed population children. African/Native American, Hispanic/Native American, African/Hispanic as well as European mixes with all the above. Oh, the faces on the children. And some of the older Native-American faces show that sort of eternal grace and beauty common in Native-Americans. It all made me wish I could do portraits.
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you just did
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i am souix, chippewa more specifically ojibwa i love the culture do appreciate the efforts to help them get out of the hole weve put them in. mixing and intermingeling cultures is the best way to begin. thanks to your daughter for the efforts. we arent there ywet but kids cant believe the way people treated black people and indians in the movies 50 or 60 years ago, it is unthinkable to them that that be allowed to exist. maybe in time we can get to that point with all people. i love the faces of the elder indians, heck i love the faces of the babies and the rest of the culture too. faces are wonderful studies.
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Some years ago I had contact with Indians on several South Dakota reservations. One of my discoveries was that they preferred “Indians” over the more politically correct “Native Americans.” And they were happy to refer to themselves as “Sioux,” although that name is disparaged in some places as a curse name applied to them by enemies. A final discovery was that some of them were friendly with white folks, and others just seethed with rage at the sight of us with our pale faces. I saw nothing more graceful to do about that except to remove myself from those I bothered.
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if it were as easy as looking at his papers to become einstein we could fill the world with als power of relativity pizza and bowl. the big als tire sale of the week. tire traction= mc2, einstein bagels. good to the last atomic ion.
i am an einstein fan and even though we have similar bad hair and forgetful tendancies i dont think al could ever be very concerned about my being mistaken for him other tan not clogging up our brains with trivial stuff ( he didnt know his mothers phone number either why remember something you can look up) w ehave very little in common. he didnt speak until he was 3 or 4 , they couldnt shut me up. he failed grade school math. i did great in math then learned to trust my excel spreadsheet to do my dirty work, i think einstien used a different program.
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As perhaps you’ve come to expect from me, l’m experiencing a different take on today’s leading question. lt’s making me aware of how many times l compare my life’s limited achievements to the most successful women in our times. And by this l mean Hillary, Angelina Jolie, Angelo, female CEOs, great pianists, best-selling writers, Olympic gymnasts – the list goes on and on, leaving me in a place of such “unimportance” and surrender. l look at these amazing women and can’t help but acknowledge that they started off no differently than me.
l’ve really never possessed a driving need to become the best at whatever talents l did have. Where does that inspired motivation come from anyway? My only “inspiration” has come from excelling at meeting adversity head on. l’m really really good at that, though. At this stage of life, it feels far too late to accomplish anything of truly great significance. About all l can come up with is that my three kids are all amazing, accomplished humans. Perhaps that’s been my purpose in life and maybe that’s enough.
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I think if I read through his papers, it would not make me sad or upset that I was not Einstein – I’m pretty happy being Anna. Not saving the world, not even changing how we view the world or space or time. Maybe getting a few more kids interested in music, maybe make the working world a little bit easier for some adults. Hopefully spreading a bit of joy where I can. I might after reading Einstein’s papers, however, feel a need to learn violin…which leads me to this (apologies – I couldn’t find the Cranberry Lake Jug Band…though in the top Google results is a play list from the LGMS…)
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I have searched for The Cranberry Lake Jug Band recording too, with no luck. The recording always reminds me of our cat Albert, he of the great girth and big heart who passed a few years ago.
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I have a Keepers CD with the Cranberry Lake Jug Band (also the Impressionists Two-Step by, I think, Pop Wagner on the same CD). If I ever lose that CD, I’m sunk.
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If you lose it, Anna, some baboon will burn a copy for you. š
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Of course! How did I forget this? (Actually, let’s not go there.)
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Just back from the Concordia Christmas concert. How would Einstein explain the audience tears shed as “I am so glad each Christmas eve” is sung in Norwegian?
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Sigh.
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Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.
– Albert Einstein
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Wow – food for thought! Think I’ll go find a book on that.
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