“I want to get paid to think,” I said aloud, almost unintentionally, when my doctoral advisor asked why I applied to grad school. Until that point, my education reeked of memorization and regurgitation. Since birth I had found success by giving people the answers they wanted to hear. Job interviewers, too, appeared to be searching for good crank-turners. Terrified of a life of repetition, I wanted a way out.
No one chooses to be born. We learn on the job, largely through imitation and association. The problem, though, is that we imitate those who also learned through imitation. If the status quo has no sanctity, then there’s no point in following it, and no shame in breaking it.
My writing is dedicated to this pursuit, motivated by the simple question: what is life really about? And what should we do about it?
“If I had an hour to solve a problem, I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and five minutes thinking about solutions.”
Albert Einstein
Approach
The Framework
Mrs. Gump said that life is like a box of chocolates, but I say that life is a piece of cake: when we put the pieces together in the right way, the whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts.
From baking to engineering, life is best when the whole exceeds the parts. Like flour, sugar, and butter for cake, the basic ingredients of life are thoughts, feelings, and actions. When these pieces come together, life feels like a finished product, like it’s happening on purpose.
All of life’s optimal experiences embody this synergy. Love synthesizes respect, attraction, and contact. Music blends theory, catharsis, and precision. No single aspect trumps the others, and all are required. The magic isn’t in the magnitude; it’s in the mixture.
Background
The Engineer
By trade and character, I am an engineer. While science is satisfied with understanding, engineering is not. It uses knowledge to make change. Fundamentally, engineering is about one thing: power.
Power provides the ability to improve our lives. It is the vehicle by which we make our dreams come true. Power makes our choices matter, and enables us to make something much better than cake: a difference.
But life isn’t about endless improvement. It’s about transformation. Mixing sugar and flour doesn’t improve either; instead, it unlocks the realm of possibility. Life can be more than better: it can be brand new.
“Go dear friend, but promise me if you meet with any obstacle to remember that I have some power in this world, that I am happy to use that power in the behalf of those I love, and that I love you.”
The Count of Monte Cristo
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