An American businessman was at the pier of a small coastal Mexican village when a small boat with just one fisherman docked. Inside the small boat were several large yellow-fin tuna. The American complimented the Mexican on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took to catch them. The Mexican replied, “Only a little while.” The American then asked the Mexican why he didn’t stay out longer to catch more fish. The Mexican replied that he had enough to support his family’s immediate needs. The American then asked, “But what do you do with the rest of your time?” 

The Mexican fisherman said, “I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take siestas with my wife Maria, and stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine and play guitar with my amigos. I have a full and busy life, señor.” 

The American scoffed. “I am a Harvard MBA and could help you. You should spend more time fishing and, with the proceeds, buy a bigger boat. With the proceeds from the bigger boat, you could buy several boats. Eventually you would have a fleet of fishing boats. Instead of selling your catch to a middleman, you could sell directly to the processor, eventually opening your own cannery. You would control the product, processing, and distribution. You would need to leave this small coastal fishing village and move to Mexico City, then LA, and eventually NYC, where you would run your expanding enterprise.”

The Mexican fisherman asked, “But señor, how long would this all take?” The American replied, “15-20 years.” 

“But what then, señor?” 

The American laughed and said, “That’s the best part. When the time is right, you would announce an IPO and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich - you would make millions.”

“Millions, señor? Then what?” 

The American said, “Then you would retire - move to a small coastal fishing village where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take siestas with your wife, and stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play guitar with your amigos.”

I’ve heard about string theory for some time now, but I’ve never taken the time to learn more about it until now. I basically spent a good few hours watching free videos online, and now I’m telling you about what I did. You’re in for a treat.

First, you might find it interesting to watch these two YouTube videos on the first ten dimensions. They are great illustrations of the concepts found in the first chapter of Rob Bryanton’s Imagining the Tenth Dimension (book, website). If you get lost after about the 5th or 6th dimension, don’t worry - I did too. Re-watching the later parts helps with understanding a little better, though.

Then comes the better part. If you have time to kill, watch NOVA’s 3-hour The Elegant Universe series on string theory and why it’s such an amazing prospect. There actually used to be only ten proposed dimensions, but after five different string theory ideas were introduced, all with very different math, Edward Witten came along and proposed an eleventh dimension to unite all these ideas.

It’s interesting to note how the strings in string theory actually closely resemble Laozi’s ancient idea of a Dao. If I didn’t hate math so much, I think I’d love to be a string theory physicist.

I remember this question from elementary school. But only just now, in the shower, did I finally come to my own terms with this seemingly paradoxical question.

It’s pretty simple. The way I see it, it all depends on how you define sound. Do you define it as the simple molecular vibrations that happen at certain amplitudes and frequencies? Or do you define it as the electrical stimuli that occur in our nervous systems when our eardrums pick up such vibrations?

If you define it as the former, then by the laws of physics, sound always occurs when a tree falls. If you define it as the latter, then no, there isn’t any sound, because no eardrums or nervous systems are around to detect the vibrations!

I guess epiphanies aren’t always what people make them out to be. The best part is, I’m sure someone else has already come up with this interpretation already.

Discuss this in the community forums.

10 things to do while having a heart attack:

1. Relax. (Panic depletes your oxygen supply.)
2. Remember life or its lack cannot be taken personally or too seriously.
3. Think how surprised all the people who accused you of not having one are going to be.
4. Call up your happiest memory, whether a desert sunset of shimmering turquoise skies shot with flickers of scorched gold, or how much you gypped the IRS out of.
5. Tell the rescue squad how angelic they look even without wings.
6. Be glad you have on clean underwear.
7. Congratulate yourself on convincing the Life Flight helicopter pilot not to cut your Nikita Koloff tee-shirt off.
8. Wish you had paid closer attention when the American Heart Association began preaching the cholesterol gospel.
9. Arrange for a sibling to feed your Siamese cats and to call your supervisor at work conveying profound regrets for unavoidable nonattendence.
10. Pray.

— Virginia Love Long, DUMC patient
Poetry in the Halls project, Cultural Services Program, DUMC

Life is simply a natural creation that has a beginning and an end. So like nature, it is impartial — generous, yet unforgiving. How, then, can we take it personally? “Life or its lack cannot be taken personally or too seriously.” I couldn’t have put it better myself.

The “story” is about leukocyte extravasation, or the movement of a white blood cell out of the bloodstream and into infected tissue. A fairly decent background in science will be necessary for anyone to get a good grasp of what’s going on in the video, but even the common person will be impressed or even amazed by how intricate our bodies are, down to the very molecules. (I would recommend the 3-minute version if you find yourself short on science background.)

We live in an amazing world, we are amazing worlds, and, in light of this video, each one of our cells is an amazing world. Who knows, molecules and atoms could also be worlds of their own, far more complex than we could ever imagine. Nature works in astounding ways.

3-minute version

The only thing scientists, partially including myself, might have against this is that the animations of the molecular movements are too “perfect.” In reality, molecules wiggle against each other randomly (Brownian motion) until these things happen naturally - more of a chaos really. Of course, if they were to show that in the video, it would probably greatly confuse the viewer, so I can see why they decided against it.

If you’re skeptical about the kinesin motor “walking” protein (and you have every right to be), there’s also a video that breaks down the process of how it “walks,” courtesy of the Milligan lab:

8-minute version

Pi can always be described as the ratio 3.14. A circle’s circumference will always, just helplessly, be a little greater than three times its diameter. An equilateral triangle will always have equal sides and three angles of 60º. The three angles of all triangles will always add up to 180º. A wave’s frequency will always be inversely proportional to its wavelength. Gravity will always be proportional to the masses of the two objects. A physicist would be able to give you a whole slew of constants and physical relationships that most people haven’t even heard of. These are all bits and pieces of what I like to call the “definition” of nature.

Of course, these numbers are only mere representations of nature. I hope my main idea isn’t obscured by this. The important thing is that there exist (∃) features in the universe that are constant and everlasting.

So that’s the idea of this “unchanging Universe” — sort of a single defined constant, from which all other constants and entities come from, that drives everything. (Not to be confused with Lucas’ Star Wars “force.”) To complement yourself with the universe, you likewise need to make yourself unchanging — or rather, revert back to your unchanging, natural self. In a word, based on my most recent theories, this would be summarized in the word “harmony.” No harmony, no oneness. I don’t think that one needs much explaining, but I’ll use a quick example. Water is polar; oil is not. Water and oil are immiscible — they are not harmonious, thus they cannot become one.

At least at the present, I think that a huge facet of reverting back to this natural, unchanging self is the lack of emotion. What?! Yeah. That’s a pretty big one that can take more than a lifetime to master. My reasoning for it kind of has a circular logic. If you understand the ultimate Universal Truth, you naturally won’t have emotions — because every happening in your life you would know to be small and insignificant; you’d have a deep understanding of cause and effect, and nothing would ever be of any surprise to you. You’d know everything. Past, present, future. Everything that has been, is, and will be, you would know. Because you understand the Truth, which is the “constant” or “equation” to ultimately everything.

That being said, reacting emotionlessly to everything in life will help you realize the ultimate Universal Truth. It forces you to look at the big picture, at how insignificant your life, the planet in general, or even this galaxy, is. (Not to be depressing.) If your roommate gets drunk and pees on your textbook the week of finals (personal experience), reacting without emotions will allow for the best outcome possible for all parties.

The 清靜經 says, 「大道無情」— the great Dao has no emotion (more). If we are to return to our essence, where we come from, then we must return to this Universal state. This “state of heart” is known in Buddhism as nirvana, and perhaps in many other religions as “going back to Heaven.” Except I think the concept of “going back to Heaven” has completely lost its original true meaning. I believe that when you reach true harmony with the Universe, you create a Heaven on Earth for yourself. You don’t need to wait until after death to go to a “Heaven.” In fact, the so-called “Heaven” is a void, anyway (more on that later), so if you can’t make yourself happy in a “Heaven on Earth,” then you can’t expect to be happy in the “Heaven” after death either. This is the same reason some people might think that their lives seem to be like a “Hell on Earth.” They have too many emotional and physical attachments that weigh them down — that’s what it always boils down to. And if you believe in a life after this one, that’s probably what it would be like too — a hell. Because your essence hasn’t changed.

That leads me to stress, again, that nothing physical is everlasting. Everything physical has a beginning and an end. Nothing tangible lasts forever. If you come to understand this, then it’s a huge leap forward in getting yourself to resonate with the Universe. When you realize this, things start to fall into place in the big picture. No confusion, no frustration, things are just the way they’re supposed to be.

One of my all-time favorite quotes is an ancient Chinese proverb:

未曾生我，誰是我。
生我之後，我是誰？

(loose translation:)
Before I was born, who was I?
After I was born, I am who?

It wasn’t until a few months ago that I truly came to understand this. Before your entry into this physical, mortal world, there was no “I.” It doesn’t exist, because there’s only one Law, one Essence, one Nature, of the Universal Truth. Everyone is a part of it — there is no “I.” But after you’re born in this physical world, a lot of people start doing some soul searching, trying to find who the “I” is. Everyone feels the need to find their way around life. What’s life’s true meaning, they ask? Why am “I” here? People get lost in the physical world because they start to look at things from the perspective of “I,” and not from the view of the Universal harmony. The physical and emotional attachments that our bodies are susceptible to are to blame.

It is my belief that life has no true meaning (again, not to be depressing) — it’s just Nature taking its course. But if you make your life have a meaning, it can have a meaning. Your life’s meaning is what you make it. But you are in fact here in this physical world merely because of Nature taking its course. There’s no simpler explanation.

A favorite story of mine is 莊子 (Zhuangzi)’s dream of a butterfly. He dreamt that he was a butterfly — but when he awoke, he couldn’t figure out whether it was him dreaming of a butterfly, or if the butterfly had just gone to sleep right when he woke up and is now dreaming of him. This calls to mind a Western adage: “Life is but a dream.” Most of us will live to be at most 100. Some of us, myself included, won’t want to live that long. Little do we know that we’ve been around for an infinite time period, and that these 100 years mean nothing in the big picture. We are physics. We are chemistry. We are macroeconomics. We are universal constants. We are all a part of everything. We just need to awaken to it, just like 莊子 awakened to his butterfly.

[qjj]

天下皆知美之爲美。斯惡已。皆知善之爲善。斯不善已。故有無相生、難易相成、長短相較、高下相傾、音聲相和、前後相隨。是以聖人處無爲之事、行不言之教。萬物作焉而不辭、生而不有、爲而不侍、功成而弗居。夫唯弗居、是以不去。

All in the world recognize the beautiful as beautiful; herein lies ugliness.
All recognize the good as good; herein lies evil.

Therefore:
Being and non-being produce each other;
Difficulty and ease bring about each other;
Long and short delimit each other;
High and low rest on each other;
Sound and voice harmonize each other;
Front and back follow each other.

Therefore the sage abides in the condition of wu-wei (無為, unattached action),
And carries out the wordless teaching.
Here, the myriad things are made, yet not separated.

Therefore the sage produces without possessing,
Acts without expectations,
And accomplishes without abiding in his accomplishments.

It is precisely because he does not abide in them that they never leave him.

Translation was modified from Charles Muller’s original work. (BTW, look how concise ancient Chinese can be! Love it.)

In the True world, there is no good or bad. Everything is relative. What’s good to one person may be bad to the next. What’s to say flunking out of high school is bad, if it helps you find you who you really are? Who says all millionaires are happy? If it rains, you can’t have your picnic, but the plants will flourish, and you’ll have water to drink. And so, there’s an intricate balance of yin and yang that we can all truly come to appreciate when we stop making ourselves the center of the universe, and start thinking of the self as just a tiny bit of it.

Now at the age of 40, she has learned how to do almost everything without hands (including using chopsticks with almost as much finesse as an oriental), and she is quite possibly many times happier than any 10 random people on the street combined. Narrations in the 30-minute video are in Mandarin Chinese with English subtitles, and Lena herself speaks fluent English.

I think there’s just a great deal we can learn from Lena. A good inspiration for the rest of us!

Birth. Life. Death. A meaningless cycle, really. But you can give life a meaning if you want to. From my standpoint, a life is only meaningful if you take the time to learn the essence of the universe and become “one” with it. It is the only way that your essence won’t be isolated from everything else when it becomes unchained from your physical body. It is only then that you can vanish from all existence and become the universe itself.

That put a really poetic twist on an actually very simple idea. Who are we as individuals? Nothing. We are simple manifestations of our surroundings. I don’t care what about us you think is “individual,” it ultimately came from somewhere around us. Our appearances, thoughts, ideas, bodies - they all came from our surroundings and lineage, be it our ancestors, food, or the simple reaction to outside stimuli. Therefore, in truth, there really is no “I” distinguishable from everything else. Individuality is an illusion - how can we break from that?