Nothing travels faster than light. Or so Einstein has taught us. Despite tremendous respect for the architect of relativity, a couple of decades ago, I tried to think of some things that might prove him, ah, well, wrong. I didn’t necessarily want Einstein to be wrong. I just wanted to find something faster than light. Because I wanted the concept of time travel to be possible.
I found something. And I worked out the mathematical proof.
In order to prepare for tomorrow, I had to get rid of yesterday.
Not all of it; there’s only so much timeline cleaning a person can handle, especially on a single day. But I did put a large dent in one particular area: thirty years of receipts.
Suppose you could have a phone conversation with anyone. Just one conversation. The only stipulation is that you cannot call the past or the future but must call someone who has either lived at some point in history or is currently alive.
Would you make the call? Whom would you choose?
If you decide to change something about yourself, should you tell others? Or should you just try to make the change and see if others notice?
What is the most contagious thing you can name?
You might be thinking about infections – nasty, tiny, hard-to-detect “bugs” such as Ebola, the flu, pneumonic plague. It’s interesting that, when we think of contagion, we first think about germs, overlooking another candidate category that spreads faster than the most infectious virus or bacteria and does so quite visibly.
Emotions.
How is your attitude?
We all know people who seem to just be “upbeat”. These people smile – almost always. They seem to see only the positive in life. And they don’t verbalize criticism, even when criticism is right there for the verbalization.
How do they do it? Why?
Get connected. Be connected. Stay connected.
I attended a large national conference on health this week and the theme was clear: connect. Connection is good for personal health. It’s good for society. It’s our evolutionary legacy, our enabling future.
It isn’t necessarily easy.
When I was around eleven, I built a soap box for the annual derby in Philadelphia. Construction took months. The day before the race, I transported my freshly painted race car from the basement of our house to the registration area in the parking lot next to the Philadelphia Art Museum. I got a racing bib and number. I parked my car in a line-up. I surveyed the other entrants.
I never competed.
“It’s time to grow up.”
Ugh! The words escaped my mouth before I could wrap them in restraint. It doesn’t matter that I often use the same words when I look at myself each morning in the mirror. They just aren’t helpful when someone else is struggling with their own feelings of uncertainty and inadequacy. Good sense, not emotion, had best take hold of one’s vocabulary in such situations.
