On this very day, 89 years ago (according to Wikipedia) Richard Phillips Feynman was born. Feynman was natural of Far Rockaway, which is located to the west of Stony Brook, here in Long Island.
Most physicist will tell you that Feynman was one of the best scientist of all time. He was part of the Manhattan Project, where the first atomic bomb was developed. Independent of the final purpose of this weapon, the Manhattan Project was an important and unorthodox scientific project. As a physicist, Feynman contributed to the development of the theory behind Quantum Electrodynamics and developed a diagrammatic approach to calculation that now bears his name. He also had important insights into areas such as elementary particles, computation, nanotechnology and statistical physics.
Last summer I read Feynman's biography by James Gleick. It was a wonderful read. The first thing I did after I finished reading it was to buy the Feynman Lectures. I really admire Feynman, he was really special. But sometimes I wonder whether he was really like that or whether most of his doings were exaggerations by people. In the end I do not care. Once I met somebody that actually had met Feynman. I asked this person how Feynman really was. The person just look to the sky, smiled and said "Oh he really was something...". That was the only thing he said.
Sometimes I feel like it is a bit silly to admire somebody that much. I guess (in general) people think they could be like them, they could attain all the fame and glory that a given famous have had. Well the truth is that there was only one Feynman. Nobody else can be him. And sometimes it is a bit hard to even try to be like them. What I am trying to say is that the best thing that can be done is to be honest with yourself and say: "Hey, Feynman was awesome, but I am not Feynman and should not even pretend to accomplish what he did". I want to say this, because I feel like I tried to accomplish many things that people around me where doing for some time. Maybe I am still doing some of that.
When I was in high school I remember everybody wanted to be an engineer or a doctor or a lawyer or a psychologist. I did not had an idea what an engineer did, I only knew that it had to do with NASA and space travel. When I was younger I wanted to be an astronaut too, but I think that is more common. Anyways, I remember hearing about the subject "physics", I had to take it during my 11th grade but there was some problem in my school and my class ended up taking biology as the science class. Along that same time line, I remember that I had one of those test about professions and interest. I do not remember what was my result, by I remember reading about all the descriptions for different areas. I had liked the chemistry class, but for some reason I enjoyed more the atoms and electrons part than the whole chemical balance and solutions, etc. Physics was described as something along the lines of "the study of matter and energy and their interactions". For some reason this reminded me of Albert Einstein, I guess because of his most famous equation. So I read on my encyclopedia about Einstein work, and about physics in general and found everything very interesting. And above all nobody else was interested in doing physics. So I felt good about it.
On my 12th grade I finally took my first course in physics, which was a bit disappointing. Around that same time the news of a child prodigy from a nearby town started appearing. At the time he was eleven years old, just finished high school and was going to start college to pursue a degree in physics. I remember that the first thing that came to my mind was hate, I hated him for being ahead of my and for being all smart. Then I realized that there was no real reason for me feeling this way, so I change my attitudes. Still, I continued with my interest in physics and now I wanted to attend the same university the prodigy was attending so I could meet him. It was not until my second year of college that I finally met him. To my surprise I was taking a course with him. And as it turned out, I took mostly all my physics courses with him. During the first few days it was very bad. He was quick and answered most of the professor's questions. Most of the times I did not even had time to consider the question at hand and think of how to answer it. I remember that I concentrated on getting better, just for the sole purpose of beating him. Thankfully it was not to late before I realized I was doing the wrong thing.
Pushing yourself hard just to be better than somebody else is the worst think that one can do. Along the way it makes you act in ways you never thought of behaving. In the end I realized that there was a fundamental difference between the prodigy and I, and that I should not care about his progress but care about my own. It worked well most of the time. We became good friends, just as life should be. I think life should not be about who is the best, but about what individual people accomplish and the importance of everybody's contribution.
In graduate school I found myself monitoring others still. Haven't I learned my lesson? Why is it so hard to disregard other people's progress, and just concentrate on yourself? I guess in the end one wants to success in life, and the fear of not doing so takes over everything else. My ideal state of mind is to fully concentrate on my own progress and flaws, and disregard others. It is not about ignoring, no. I want to have friends and celebrate their own success. But I do not want to compare myself with others. It is just a waste of time and energy (to conjugate variables).
Well, I wanted to talked about Feynman. At the same time I mentioned a bit bout idols and comparing yourself with others. Maybe later I will write some more on this topic.
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