“Anything truly novel is invented only during one’s youth”

This summer I read Walter Isaacson’s illuminating biography of Albert Einstein, the man who is widely considered to be the greatest thinker of the 20th Century. In 1905, when he was only 26 years old, he published four groundbreaking papers that forever changed the way people understood space, time, mass, gravity and energy.

By the time Einstein turned 40 in 1919, at a moment when he was struggling to devise a unified theory of matter, he complained to a friend that “Anything truly novel is invented only during one’s youth. Later, one becomes more experienced, more famous – and more blockheaded“.

Einstein’s frustration at his diminished capabilities as he aged is a phenomenon that is considered common with mathematicians and physicists who seem to make their greatest contributions to science before they turn 40. Einstein remarked to a colleague that as he got older he felt his intellect slowly becoming crippled and calcified.

Why does this happen? In Einstein’s case, it was partly because his early successes had come from his rebellious traits. In his youth, there was a link between his creativity and his willingness to defy authority and the universally accepted cosmological laws of his day. He had no sentimental attachment to the old order and was energized at the chance to show that the accepted knowledge was wrong or incomplete. His stubbornness worked to his advantage.

After he turned 40, his youthful rebellious attitudes were softened by the comforts of fame, renown, riches and a comfortable home. He became wedded to the faith of preserving the certainties and determinism of classical science – leading him to reject the uncertainties inherent in the next great scientific breakthrough, quantum mechanics. His stubbornness began working to his disadvantage as he got older.

It was a fate that Einstein began fearing years before it happened. He wrote after finishing his most groundbreaking papers: “Soon I will reach the age of stagnation and sterility when one laments the revolutionary spirit of the young“. In one of his most revealing statements about himself, Einstein complained: “To punish me for my contempt of authority, Fate has made me an authority myself“. He found it even harder as he got older acknowledging “the increasing difficulty a man past fifty always has adapting to new thoughts”.

Einstein brilliance is beyond compare, but I can relate to his observation about doing your best work when you are young. When I look back at my personal life and work career, I recognize that I was at my most ambitious and innovative during the decades of my 20’s and 30’s.

My adult life exploded with big events in 1982, the year that I turned 22. In the timespan of that one year I managed to graduate from college, marry my college sweetheart, start my first professional job as an engineer, buy a new house and a new car, and learn that my wife and I were going to become first-time parents. I remember filling out a survey designed to measure the amount of stress in your life during that eventful year and being surprised when the calculated stress numbers registered so high that they indicated I should be dead!

But all of it was exhilarating to me at that point in my life. I was experiencing new things and accumulating knowledge like a sponge. I knew that my growing family would be counting on me to be a good provider – which gave me the incentive I needed to focus on building a stable career.

I was determined to be successful in my engineering role and threw myself into learning everything I possibly could about the company I worked for as well as the electronic test and measurement equipment that they manufactured.

Many of my co-workers had graduated from more prestigious universities than me and I felt that I had something to prove. I wanted to make a name for myself and grow my reputation and value within the company by making important contributions to the projects to which I was assigned.

I took several continuing education engineering classes at night to improve my knowledge of subject areas that I knew would be helpful to me at work, I sought out brilliant co-workers who could mentor me and give me wise advice on how to approach complex technical projects, and I questioned everything – wondering if there might be a better solution to the problems we were trying to solve.

This drive in my early career to be successful enabled me to do my most innovative and important work for the company during the decades of my 20’s and 30’s. In the span of my first 18 years working for the company, I was awarded two patents, helped develop multiple new test products which generated millions of dollars for the company, created automated software regression tests significantly lowering product development times while improving software quality, and published frequent technical articles for industry conferences and trade journals.

By the time I turned 40, I could point to many important career milestones and had achieved recognition as a top performer and leader within the company. The rewards of my hard work were a comfortable home and financial independence. With this success I began to have feelings of contentment that lessened my drive to take on new projects or solve interesting problems. I became comfortable and happy with life as it was – I no longer felt the need to over-extend myself.

I was satisfied to rest on my past achievements and to take on less tasking roles that would improve the product in evolutionary, rather than revolutionary ways. Over time, I became the wise, experienced, older mentor to younger employees who came to me for advice and direction.

I felt okay with that transition as I considered it my good fortune to be in a situation where I was able to share my knowledge with a new generation of ambitious young people who were ready to make their own marks on the world by inventing novel new solutions that were now beyond me. In some ways, being a part of those collaborative efforts made me feel better than my individual personal accomplishments.

The famous journalist Ed Bradley once interviewed Bob Dylan in 1998 on the television show 60 minutes, at a time when he was approaching 60 years old. During the course of the interview, Bradley asked Bob what the source of inspiration was for his famous early songs, the ones that led to him being recognized as the voice of a generation while he was still only in his 20’s.

Dylan replied that his early songs were almost magically written and that he felt some kind of power, outside of himself, flowing through him while was writing them. When Bradley asked if he could still tap into that penetrating magic now in his songwriting, Dylan paused and said; “No, I don’t know how I got to write those songs“. Bradley followed up and asked if that disappointed him, Dylan replied softly; “Well you can’t do something forever and I did it once… and I can do other things now – but I can’t do that“.

That is a healthy way, I believe, of thinking about what is possible for each of us as we age. My days of endless ambition and innovative thinking are past. But I can do other things now that I couldn’t do then. I can indulge hobbies that interest me, I can find new paths to hike and rivers to fish, I can help care for my mother in her old age and I can share what I have learned through my life experiences and pass it on to my grandchildren and the larger community via this blog.

There will only ever be one Einstein, none of us will ever be as brilliant as him – but if you are under 40, get busy by putting your spry young mind and youthful ambition to work! Maybe you too can come up with novel ideas and ways of doing things that will help change the world or someone’s life for the better.

And if you are over 40, you can be like Einstein in his older years; contributing in a positive way to his community and sharing his wisdom, experience and good fortune with the next generation. In the end, many of our late in life pursuits that we share with others can end up being more rewarding and meaningful to us than any personal accomplishments we achieve along the way.

Wear the World Lightly

There is a story I heard once about two relatives who were attending the funeral services of a wealthy family member. One of them, with a greedy glint in his eyes, leans over and whispers; “how much did he leave?“. The other looks back and responds…”All of it“. The point of the story was that when our time comes, we don’t take any of our possessions with us.

St. Francis of Assisi, who was born into a wealthy noble family, left his life of possessions and privileges to start a monastery and live a life of simplicity. His advice to those who wanted to join him was to “Wear the world like a loose garment, which touches us in a few places and there but lightly”. 

St Francis Statue

The Alcoholic Anonymous organization adopted this teaching of St Francis and shortened it to the simple phrase: Wear the World Lightly. Their 12-step program for overcoming addiction uses lots of sayings to help people detach and overcome their addictions, phrases like: live and let live, let go and let God, turn it over, easy does it, and one day at a time.

All of these statements of detachment are not intended to send a message that we should be indifferent or dead to the world, or have no feelings at all. Rather their purpose is to teach people to face the world with a kind of mindful disengagement.

It is this “detachment with love” philosophy that can help motivate people to create a peaceful space within themselves, separated from the never-ending incoming arrows of uncertainty, fear, anger, and other painful events that plague our life. Practicing detachment helps people look past the daily shocks that occur, producing a change of attitude in the mind and a physical release in the body.

To wear the world as a loose garment is to acknowledge that the world and our life will always press at us and around us, but that it does not have to touch us but “lightly”. Most things are either outside our control or ultimately unimportant. 

We do not need to grasp, manage, dwell on or react to everything that happens to us. We can choose instead to keep the world at an emotional distance so we can stay focused on doing the next right thing. It is an attitude that can relax the body and relieve the mind of the poisonous emotions that overcome us when we are confronted by the people, places or things that beset us.

To be in the world but not of it, is to live and move through life without being emotionally attached to everything that happens. Life can get hard, but those who wear the world lightly learn how to live in the world with their hardships, neither fighting them nor being crushed by them.

St Francis was essentially encouraging us to not sweat the small stuff. To not get annoyed or depressed when life does not go your way or when you do not get what you want. When you have lived long enough you come to understand that most of the things that bother us are small potatoes. Even death apparently, which the Dalai Lama described as a simple change of clothes.

I’ve heard it said that the secret to happiness as we age “is to care less and less about more and more“. The wise elders I have been fortunate to know in my life carried that attitude with them; they tended to let fewer and fewer things bother them as they got older. It’s not because they didn’t care, most likely it was just that they discovered through their life experience that it is possible to walk away, without anger or agitation, from some things they felt passionate about – and still live.

I happened across an on-line sermon about this same topic of wearing the world lightly by Bishop Robert Barron. From a spiritual point of view, Bishop Barron also believes that St Francis’ famous statement was an attempt to teach his followers about the importance of detachment – especially from the goods and achievements of the world.

Not because the world itself is bad – there are all kinds of good, true and beautiful things in the world – but because the things of the world are not the ultimate good and we are not meant to cling to them as though they were.

There are stories throughout the Bible about the futility of clinging on to earthly power, riches and glory. King Solomon is one of the greatest figures in the history of Israel from a standpoint of wealth and power. He was somebody who had it all; nobody was richer, nobody was more famous, nobody had richer palaces or clothes. But, as an old man, looking at all the possessions he has acquired over his lifetime, he says: “Vanity of vanities, all things are vanity!“.

The word vanity in Hebrew signifies something that is insubstantial and momentary, like wind or vapor or bubbles; something that is here for a brief time and then it is gone. Solomon has experienced everything: power, sensual pleasure, wisdom, honor and wealth. He has built up a reserve of wealth through his knowledge and skills and yet when he is gone, he must leave all his property to others who have not labored over it and do not deserve it.

It is not uncommon to hear complaints like this from men as they become old and infirm; “I gave my whole life to my business, I worked hard and I made a fortune. Now I’m an old man and I’m surrounded by ungrateful children and grand-children; and I’ve done all this work and yet these people are going to inherit all my wealth. What’s it all been about“?

If you live to be old enough, at some point, you finally come to realize that everything in this world has a quality of evanescence – it disappears and does not last. It is a good thing if you have been successful and built up a fortune – but it’s not going to last. Because you are going to fade away and it’s all going to go to somebody else.

Should we just be depressed then? Father Barron says no, not depressed, instead we should be detached. Our wealth, power, pleasure and the esteem of other people. It’s good. We should take it in and then let it go. We should enjoy it the way you enjoy a firework going off. Learn to live in the present moment, savoring what we can, but then letting it go.

Why? Because we come to realize that the truly good and beautiful things belong to a higher world. We can sense them in the good things of this world but none of our earthly things last and so if we cling to them, what happens is they disappear, they crumble as we try to grasp at them. Rather see them, appreciate them and then let them go.

We can get caught in an addictive pattern when we cling to the goods of the world. You worry about them so you say to yourself, oh no I better get more. Instead, we would be wise to remember the cautionary parable of the rich fool told by Jesus:

“The ground of a certain rich man brought forth abundantly. He reasoned within himself, saying, ‘What will I do, because I don’t have room to store my crops?’ He said, ‘This is what I will do. I will pull down my barns, and build bigger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. I will tell my soul, “Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years. Take your ease, eat, drink, be merry.”‘ “But God said to him, ‘You fool, this very night your soul is required of you. The things which you have prepared— whose will they be?’

Luke 12:16-21

St Francis asks us to cultivate an attitude of detachment in our life. To stop clinging and hanging on to the things of the world. The more we cling to them, the more we become imprisoned by them. We’ll become bitter, angry , empty if our only focus is on the acquisition of ephemeral things. But if we practice the proper spiritual attitude of detachment and keep our eyes on the true and beautiful things that do not fade away then we will know how to handle the goods of the world as they come to us.

Fr Barron closes his sermon by emphasizing again that wealth in itself is not the problem. He points out that wealthy people can be saintly when they know how to use their wealth, how to wear it lightly and how to become generous with it. The only thing we take with us into the life to come is the quality of our love and what we’ve given away on earth. So, we should forget about trying to fill up our lives with bigger barns; true joy in life comes through building up our treasure in heaven.

The publication of this particular blog represents a milestone for me and the achievement of a goal I set for myself way back in 2013 when I posted my very first Words to Live By blog entry. I have been publishing this monthly blog for almost 10 years now and and have managed to author 100 different blog entries in that time.

I have attempted in this collection of postings to communicate ideas and philosophies that have helped me along the way and given my life direction and meaning. It has been a wonderful mental exercise for me and a labor of love that has helped me recognize things that make life interesting and wonderful. I hope my readers have discovered some of their own words to live by that will be of specific value to them in their own life.

In the spirit of “wearing the world lightly”, I plan to cut back on my blogging activities moving forward so that I am can devote more time focusing on doing the next right things in my life that will increase the quality of my love. I don’t plan to walk away from blogging completely though, as there are always more words to live by to be discovered and examined.

So, keep an eye out for the occasional future posting from me; and until then, may the blessings abound in your life.

To err is human; to forgive Divine

In keeping with the spirit of the Holiday Season, at this time of year I look to post uplifting topics about hope and redemption. This year I would like to write a few words in praise of Bill Buckner.

For those of you unfamiliar with Bill Buckner, he was an All-Star Major League Baseball player and one of the game’s great underrated hitters. He finished seven seasons of a 22 year career with better than a .300 average, compiled 2715 hits (more than either Joe DiMaggio or Ted Williams) and won the 1980 American League batting title.

I happened to be at a Red Sox baseball game this summer with my wife when the Public Address announcer informed the crowd that Bill Buckner had passed away. The fans respectfully cheered while the team played a montage video of Bill on the center field scoreboard, but I was thinking how unfortunate it was that Bill would probably not be remembered for his career of excellent play, but instead for the one notable error he was unlucky enough to make on the world’s biggest stage.

The stage was Game 6 of the 1986 World Series, the Boston Red Sox against the New York Mets. The Red Sox were 1 out away from clinching the title when the Mets rallied from a two run deficit.

The 36 year old Buckner – hobbled by bum ankles and knees – was playing first base for Boston when Mookie Wilson hit a weak ground ball to him – a ball he would normally field successfully 99 times out of a 100. But in this instance the ball somehow eluded Buckner’s glove and bounced past him into the outfield. The Mets scored the winning run completing a stunning come from behind victory.

The Fateful Error

The deflated Red Sox went on to lose game 7 and frustrated Sox fans everywhere – who had been suffering from a championship drought since 1918 – made Buckner the scapegoat for the team’s failure. They focused on the error; forgetting all about Buckner’s key contributions to the team during Boston’s crucial September playoff run when he carried the team, batting a stellar .340 and hitting eight home runs.

Buckner’s error became one of the most infamous plays in baseball history. Replays of the error with announcer Vin Scully shouting “It gets through Buckner!” were played constantly on the television. The headlines in the Boston newspaper screamed “Buckner Boots Big Grounder“. He was the scourge of Boston sports for a lengthy period of time.

Buckner’s career and life changed in an instant. The fans and media piled on – branding him as the guy who missed the ground ball. Buckner received death threats and one reporter allegedly called Buckner’s wife to ask her if he was contemplating suicide. In the immediate aftermath of the heartbreaking error and painful loss, I too became part of the mob cursing the name of Bill Buckner.

The taunting reminders of that muffed grounder battered Buckner so relentlessly that he eventually chose to relocate away from the rage in New England to an isolated ranch in Idaho where he could find some peace. His family, he said, “didn’t like to see how people were treating me.“

The magazine editor William Falk met Buckner ten years after the 1986 series and he remembers Buckner stiffening when he introduced himself as a reporter from New York. He could still glimpse the old hurt in Buckner’s eyes which quickly became hard and challenging. He was glad to see the reporter go.

Why was Buckner alone assigned the blame when so many others contributed as much or more to the Red Sox defeat? Buckner’s miscue marked the unkindest bounce of fate, a most improbable error sustained by a good and admired man at the worst possible moment.

As a man of faith Bill must have wondered what God had wrought – to have to live out his life being defined by the worst five seconds he ever experienced. His wife said a lesser man would have crumbled under the things that he had to endure.

Gradually Buckner learned to live with his mistake and even come to laugh at it. He wondered if it was part of some mysterious plan that could somehow be used as a life lesson for others experiencing misfortune in their life. Buckner said, “I was a little bitter over it for a long time, because I didn’t think I deserved it, … but then I’ve had a lot of people call me and thank me for giving them directions to make it through — and that’s a good thing.”

I read recently that there are at least three things it is good to forget. First is past accomplishments because out of success too often comes complacency and contentment that lull the mind. Second, it is good to forget our hurts because if we just dwell on our bitterness we will accomplish little. Finally, it is good to forget our failures because all of us make mistakes and sometimes we do not succeed even when we’ve worked hard and given something our best shot.

With time comes wisdom, compassion and perspective. Many Red Sox fans eventually came to realize how unfairly they had treated Bill Buckner. In recent years sportswriters began publishing articles about how the Boston fans had finally come to forgive him – especially after the team finally broke the 86 year championship drought by capturing World Series titles in 2004 and 2007.

In my opinion Bill Buckner never needed to seek forgiveness. He didn’t do anything wrong. He didn’t purposely miss the ball. He was trying his very best. Errors like that happen every day in baseball… and in life. It is those of us who treated Bill so uncharitably for so many years who should ask for forgiveness.

In 2008, 22 years after the fateful error, the Red Sox invited Bill Buckner back to Fenway Park for the celebration of the 2007 Championship. When he walked out to the mound to throw out the game’s ceremonial first pitch, the players and fans gave him a moving two minute standing ovation. Buckner’s eyes grew wet with tears. I remember watching the scene with tears in my eyes too – hoping that Bill had found it in his heart to forgive us.

Red Sox Fans Cheer Buckner’s Return, 2008

“Glad I came“, said Buckner after the game, “I really had to forgive, not the fans of Boston, per se, but I would have to say in my heart I had to forgive the media. For what they put me and my family through. So, you know, I’ve done that and I’m over that.”

Terry Francona, former Red Sox manager who was visiting the park that day said “I thought it was kind of a healing moment, it seemed, for a lot of people and for him, I hope”.

Bill Buckner died at the age of 69 after a long battle with Lewy body dementia – another cruel twist of fate that crippled the once great athlete with cognitive and movement problems. But he accepted it with grace.

On learning the news of Bill Buckner’s death Red Sox principal owner John Henry said: “We are proud that Bill Buckner wore a Red Sox jersey during the course of a terrific career that spanned more than two decades. His life was defined by perseverance, resilience, and an insatiable will to win. Those are the traits for which he will be most remembered.”

Mookie Wilson, the Mets baseball player who hit the fateful ground ball back in 1986, wrote: “I was saddened to hear about Bill’s death. He was a good teammate and a solid family man. We had developed a friendship that lasted well over 30 years. I felt badly for some of the things he went through. Bill was a great great baseball player whose legacy should not be defined by one play.”

Here’s wishing you all the generosity and goodwill of the Christmas season – may we all have the strength, resilience and perseverence of Bill Buckner when things in life don’t go our way and may we never forget that heavenly maxim “To err is human; to forgive, Divine“.

“The problem with the rat race is that even if you win, you’re still a rat.”

I recently decided to retire at the relatively young age of 56. It is quite a big transition for me as I have been working in one capacity or another since the age of 10 – the last 34 years were spent working at a respected high technology company.

I always envied my father who worked a city government job and was able to retire at age 57 with a guaranteed lifelong pension. I watched him enjoying a rich and active retirement lifestyle which encouraged me to set a goal to be on track for my own early retirement.

Because my job in the private sector did not offer the benefit of a pension, I had to achieve my early retirement goal by making sacrifices through the years to limit my spending, increase my savings and consciously deciding to live below my means.

I will be forever grateful to my employer whose work made it possible for me to take care of my family over 3 decades; who provided me with interesting and challenging work to do; who gave me the opportunity to travel and see the world; and who allowed me to establish myself as a key contributor to the company’s products and to become a respected voice in the greater electronic manufacturing test industry.

In return for all of the above I gave the company the majority of my life energy for the better part of 34 years – the prime years of my life. It was an exchange and a bargain that I don’t regret but it does make me think about this joke Lily Tomlin once made about work: “The problem with the rat race is that even if you win, you’re still a rat”.

I do consider myself as having won the rat race. By all measures I was successful at the various roles I was given in the company and I was able to leave on my own terms after achieving all of my goals.

Despite all that I achieved and even though I liked the work I did and the people I worked with – in the end I was still a rat. I had to endure 3 hour daily commutes on some of my state’s most congested highways; my marketing and operations support activities for our global company often called for 24 hour/ 7 day a week availability which cut into personal and family time; I missed family events because of frequent business trips; I put off doing things that interested me because I did not have time.

I know that lost time is not found again, but I am excited to see what lies ahead now that my time is now my own. I look forward to spending my remaining life energy pursuing the many things that interest me and the activities I have put off over the years – while I am still healthy and physically able.

I hope it will be said of me, unlike those aging athletes who continue to play too long past their prime, that I left at the right time when I was on top.