Peace, Love, and Albert

Back in 1931, Albert Einstein was invited to give a lecture at Oxford, and he happily obliged.

When he was through, they wrestled the chalk eraser from his hand and slapped a sheet of plexiglass on top of his furious scribbling. Now it hangs on the wall of their Museum of the History of Science so folks can ogle at it.

I have no idea what the lecture was about, although we can make an educated guess that the subject was Relativity. However, I like to imagine that Albert was really talking about his formula for a Delightful Life (hence the big D).

If this was indeed the case, I’m pretty sure the other variables would be as follows:

P = Peace

t = Thinking

C = Creativity

K = Kindness – or possibly kangaroos. Kangaroos are always delightful.

L = Love

a = aha!

That squiggly thing that sometimes looks like an “S” and other times looks like an “e” – I think that stands for maintaining a firm belief in magical possibilities.

And the y = “Why? Because I said so, and I’m Albert Einstein!”

I love Albert Einstein. He was AMAZING. And yet he was not the kind of scientist who spent his time laboring away in a lab. He was a theoretical physicist who spent most of his time in a chair… thinking.

Yeah, he did lots and LOTS of thinking.

And he said this about it:

We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking

we used when we created them.

That quote has been my creative thinking mantra for a long time. Feel free to use it, too – whether your problem is a plot twist or global warming.

Creative thinking is the answer.

The question is relatively irrelevant.

PROMPT: Find a chair. Sit. Think. Bonus points if you play the violin – Albert loved the violin.