Chilled Out Bearded Man

Its coming May 2009. And its lookin’ oh so cool.

Its gonna show you everything you need to know about everything.

http://www.wolframalpha.com/

Alright… I didn’t make him. But I knew him before he was what he is today. Don Hertzfeld was just a plain old dull pencil like the rest of us. From the moment we were placed in the same class, I knew that Don Hertzfeld would be something special – a step up from me – better at making things clearer. After years of honing, the sharp Don that you know and love was finally created. He went from being a standard number two to number one in the class. I had been number one, but he erased me, plain and simple. He just wiped me right off the board. My remains were left outside with the other rocks to fend for myself. Don would stare out the window now and again to check on me, but I had known from the day he came into that class that he would be the teacher’s pet. I knew that, because I was at the head of the class and he was merely writing on a boring desk. But I liked him. I really did. Everyday was a new day for Don. Everyday he would come in a little sharper, a little more prepared for the day’s work. And everyday, I felt a little more worn down, a little shorter and with less to give. One day, first thing in the morning, Don came running into the room. Someone tripped and sent Don flying four feet through the air. He landed below me sprawled out like a tree with no branches. Someone could have been injured pretty badly, but alas, all eyes were spared from such a disaster. He was lucky to still be in one piece after a fall like that. But I knew that was the end for me. I had been worn down to nothingness. That day, Don was picked up. He was looking extra sharp in his yellow suit. I knew that my position at the head of the class was over. I stepped aside – or I should say I was wiped aside - my remnants thrown out to the dogs and Don took his rightful position as the lead of the class. His taste was very stylized. His descriptions of things were impeccable. A part of me was still in that class, but mostly, I had been blown to the wind. What remained of me faded away slowly. Don Hertzfeld, the sharpest pencil in town, took my job.

I know this story makes no sense whatsolutely. But sometimes, thats the point. What’s the point? Don’s the point. He uses points to draw points with points. You probably get it by now. The end will come, even for Don the pencil. Come back next to see Don reach his end, as the shiny Ben Pic roles his way past Don.

I have never understood what people mean when they say that a genius is a person who knows the answer and just needs to figure out how to get to it. The most common example is the fact that Einstein calculated the equation for relativity and got the correct answer even though when people reviewed the calculations they discovered errors. Once they corrected the errors, his answer was still correct.

What is a successful businessman? A good business man is a man with goals. He knows what he wants to achieve. Whether his intentions are good or evil, he would be considered a successful business man if he sets out a goal and achieves it.

In life, we are all wondering what our purpose is. The geniuses understand. They have some end goal that they know to work towards. Sometimes they might not understand the road to get there, but that is not a problem as long as they have ambition and perseverence. They already know the answer. They only need to get to it.

Its like walking down a road. If you know your final destination, you can reach it. If you don’t have a destination that you are heading towards, then there is no way for you to get there. This is because “there” is nowhere unless it is somewhere. So you must set yourself goals. Finding the road to reach the goals is the pleasure of living life with meaning. (What is the meaning of life, you ask?)

And what about all those people who set out to achieve a goal and failed? Weren’t their lives miserable? No. They felt alive each and every day they spent trying to achieve that goal. They toiled and tortured themselves, but there was a constant “light at the end of the tunnel”.

All of the people who had a goal were happy, but what of those of us who have no goal? We don’t know our purpose. We feel lost. We have no direction.

Well, if you were sitting in the desert and you felt lost, what would you do? Would you sit in one place and let yourself die? No! You would choose a direction and start walking. And if you hit a dead end, you would choose another direction and walk some more. You choose a direction and you go.

We must all choose a direction. If we know the destination, then it will be that much easier to choose a direction. If we do not know the destination, if we do not have an obvious goal, then we must make choices and push in a direction.

Many of us allow the road to be chosen for us. We believe that fate will choose our direction. If we leave many doors open, then life will close the unwanted doors for us, we think to ourselves. But I beg to differ. “Life” does not know what doors are correct. “Life” is not an intelligent mind like a human mind. “Life” is a way of saying that we are animate beings. And we are animate beings with intelligence. “Life” does not control. “Life is” as they say “what we make of it”.

We are intelligent. We must use our intelligence to choose a path. And when our intelligence fails us, we must choose a path from the ones available. Making a wise decision is extremely valuable. Making a bad decision is less so. But making no decision at all is the worst. Sitting in the desert and allowing ourselves to die without living first is a waste of our intelligence, a waste of our potential and a gauranteed way to feel dead long before our “life” stops. And on the upside, if you choose a direction and maybe find that special something, people will know that you are a genius and that you lived a “meaningful” life.

(There is no answer to the meaning of life, because the meaning of life is not a question. Think about that for a second. Or don’t. It really makes no sense. We have life. Thats that. Now give it meaning.)