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!  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?