Ray A. Lucas Some people consider their work a calling. In my case, it literally was, but I'll get back to that later... The story is somewhat long and complicated, and too long for me to really tell or for you to read here! But, if you're really so desperate for something to read right now, well, you must be trying to avoid something else you probably should be doing! In that case, read on, dear reader...
As a child, I wanted to do practically everything, and I thought that I could, and that I should be able to... We all learn that we have limitations, but we also sometimes learn that we often have never really fully tested them or our capacity to learn. My own father, mother, brother, and grandparents, as well as a number of other relatives and family friends when I was a child, all exceptional people in their own ways, taught me that there is always more to learn. The same is true of the many exceptional people with whom I have been fortunate to meet, work, and play, in astronomy, music and the arts, and in sports I've played like basketball and football, and indeed, of the many exceptional people I've been fortunate to meet in life in general.
In school, I sometimes had a strange and maddening tendency in math and physics classes to solve the problems that everyone else missed and then miss too many of the ones that everyone else solved! Thus, I rarely shied away from a challenge, but sometimes jumped in over my head... Learning that I could do some things was something of a comfort, once learned, belying all the trouble I sometimes had convincing myself of the right way to do something in some circumstances. But both science and math proceed by hard work, and by looking into the darkness and shining a light to satisfy a healthy intellectual curiosity and/or equally to overcome fear and apprehension. It is by such fits and starts, and by overcoming our own stumbling blocks that we learn. The human brain, of course, is still one of the greatest mysteries in the universe! | |
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