its all relative
my rosh chodesh group met last thursday (a day out i know - we are busy women with scheduling issues) as we have for the last eight plus years. the group's topics vary from month to month influenced by the person leading, the mood of the month and the phases we go through. this month - adar 1 ( a leap year month in the lunar calendar) - took us on an unexpected path which has got me thinking ever since.
note: i could easily write tonnes just about the group and its friend/family dynamic and the power of a womans group yadiayada but i'm not.
anyway thanks to the group i discovered that 2005 has been declared einstein year in celebration of 100 years since the publication of albert einstein's papers on relativity.
the connection to adar? well T, whose turn it was to run the group, is a well hidden physicist with a less hidden crush on/appreciation for mr einstein. on contemplating the concept of how every now and again (7 times in 19 years to be exact) we add a whole new month into the lunar calendar (a more wholesale approach to the 29th of february thing) T couldnt help but think about that whole time and space concept. forget the final frontier... just how bizarre is this thing called time if we can just create whole new months? why not a year, a century.
and thus T felt fit to introduce us all to e=mc2 and all that jazz. now if i got it at all, relativity in a nutshell is that time is relative and that we all experience time according to where we are. so if i'm on a train travelling 50mph and a car passes me travelling 55mph then to me its only 5 mph or something like that.
to explore the idea in more tangible terms we read chapters from a fascinating book called einstein's dreams. this fictional and highly creative book written by an MIT professor presents a group of dreams that einstein could well have had as his mind was somehow coming to grips with the relativity concept. it brought up lots of mind-bogglingideas - which i'm sure i'm going to dumb down in translation so i highly recommend you go out and read it for yourself - how would we act without memory, what would the world be like if we knew it was going to end, does where you stand affect the truth of whats happening?
stuff for deep thinking indeed ...how much of my life is subject to this same theory?
now to say "its all relative" is no chiddish (innovation) so let me remind you that the theory only really takes any kind of effect when you get near the speed of light. thus in day to day life the effect is almost completely negligible.
and thats the point for me.
there's lots of obvious relative stuff going on in my life. differences between people that i learn to understand and even appreciate. situations i learn to handle, put myself in their shoes and so on.
but then there are the rare times when it really seems like i get it. we're there together - in the experience. you saw it felt it, i saw it felt it. it was there - genuine, sincere.... there. and yet there's that tiniest nuance, so easily missed but there all the same and suddenly its different. two totally different experiences - almost undetected by the human eye. two simultaneous occurences with critical divergences.
and thats it. what you thought was perfect synchronicity has gone. in the end it may not matter. but at this point it doesnt exist. enlightening and deflating at the same time and like most things in this world totally out of my control -- try though i may.
almost sad to be so close yet so apart. take solace in the fact that to have got so close we must've been travelling at the speed of light.
note: i could easily write tonnes just about the group and its friend/family dynamic and the power of a womans group yadiayada but i'm not.
anyway thanks to the group i discovered that 2005 has been declared einstein year in celebration of 100 years since the publication of albert einstein's papers on relativity.
the connection to adar? well T, whose turn it was to run the group, is a well hidden physicist with a less hidden crush on/appreciation for mr einstein. on contemplating the concept of how every now and again (7 times in 19 years to be exact) we add a whole new month into the lunar calendar (a more wholesale approach to the 29th of february thing) T couldnt help but think about that whole time and space concept. forget the final frontier... just how bizarre is this thing called time if we can just create whole new months? why not a year, a century.
and thus T felt fit to introduce us all to e=mc2 and all that jazz. now if i got it at all, relativity in a nutshell is that time is relative and that we all experience time according to where we are. so if i'm on a train travelling 50mph and a car passes me travelling 55mph then to me its only 5 mph or something like that.
to explore the idea in more tangible terms we read chapters from a fascinating book called einstein's dreams. this fictional and highly creative book written by an MIT professor presents a group of dreams that einstein could well have had as his mind was somehow coming to grips with the relativity concept. it brought up lots of mind-bogglingideas - which i'm sure i'm going to dumb down in translation so i highly recommend you go out and read it for yourself - how would we act without memory, what would the world be like if we knew it was going to end, does where you stand affect the truth of whats happening?
stuff for deep thinking indeed ...how much of my life is subject to this same theory?
now to say "its all relative" is no chiddish (innovation) so let me remind you that the theory only really takes any kind of effect when you get near the speed of light. thus in day to day life the effect is almost completely negligible.
and thats the point for me.
there's lots of obvious relative stuff going on in my life. differences between people that i learn to understand and even appreciate. situations i learn to handle, put myself in their shoes and so on.
but then there are the rare times when it really seems like i get it. we're there together - in the experience. you saw it felt it, i saw it felt it. it was there - genuine, sincere.... there. and yet there's that tiniest nuance, so easily missed but there all the same and suddenly its different. two totally different experiences - almost undetected by the human eye. two simultaneous occurences with critical divergences.
and thats it. what you thought was perfect synchronicity has gone. in the end it may not matter. but at this point it doesnt exist. enlightening and deflating at the same time and like most things in this world totally out of my control -- try though i may.
almost sad to be so close yet so apart. take solace in the fact that to have got so close we must've been travelling at the speed of light.
posted by LG at 7:03 AM
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