But the more I learn about him, the more I am fascinated.
He was a romantic...
"Any man who can drive safely while kissing a pretty girl is simply not giving the kiss the attention it deserves."
He was delightfully blunt...
"If you are out to describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor."
He was a magnificent scientist...
"When you are courting a nice girl, an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder, a second seems like an hour. That's relativity."
...But he was a realist...
"It's not that I'm so smart; it's that I stay with problems longer."
He was a pacifist...
"You cannot simulaneously prevent and prepare for war."
He was insightful...
"People love chopping wood. In this activity one immediately sees results."
He was humorous...
"The devil has put a penalty on all things we enjoy in life. Either we suffer in health or we suffer in soul or we get fat."
...And he was genius when it came to understanding the creative mind. Einstein would take long walks on the beach alone weekly, in solitude and quiet, to listen to the chatter in his mind. This is where his greatest theories came from--giving the thoughts in his brain time to speak to him.
"I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity."
And to understand more about this concept, I am trying this theory on for one week.
Think about it. How afraid are we of silence? I'm the first to step forward and admit that I tend to get in the mindset of thinking if I'm not plugged in, in touch, online, updated frequently, then it's time wasted. I forget how satisfying it can be to just hear the whirr of electricity, birds chirping, the sound of air...
So for one week, I'll stay unplugged from the computer, iPods, television, movies, and limit my reading time. No radio while driving. No background television while I'm getting sleepy. No passing Facebook checks when I have a spare few seconds. I'm interested in listening to the chatter in my own head, hear what language is spoken in there, giving voice to ideas and thoughts.
I'll be back to report on this experiment in one week. Sunday, August 8th, I'll be back. In the meantime, I have Mix Tape posts scheduled ahead of time to continue my 100 days of music saga.
See you with some extra deep thoughts next week!
3 comments:
One of his letters to his first wife included a list of rules, one being that she should "expect neither intimacy nor fidelity." He cheated many times on both the women he married. He had his stepdaughter deliver letters to his mistresses.
A genius and a heck of a man, no doubt, but a romantic? Nah.
One might say he had too much romance for one woman.
I never said he was faithful or moral. :)
You are correct, and make an excellent point. Forgive me, I link the terms in my mind, and sometimes I forget the rest of the world doesn't think exactly like I do at all times.
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