The Advantages of Being a Meathead

File under: "Doctor's Note"

I deemed the value of life lay in its inscrutable possibilities. -Ralph Waldo Emerson

I once heard a story that Sir Isaac Newton invented Calculus just from having seen an apple fall from a tree and, in turning to the Moon he asked, “Is the Moon also falling?”. The formulas on Gravity he later found by using his invention of Calculus are dripping through the world all around us. So why are we afraid to ask weird questions? For a healthy portion of my childhood I was raised by PBS. I’m truly not mad about it. I was also raised by a child who grew up loving Sherlock Holmes. It was perhaps first in Sherlock that the “inscrutable possibilities” that Emerson wrote about came alive. How many inventions did he have? He was a combat athlete. Classical Musician. Mathematician. A master of disguise who occasionally experimented with various drugs to fake his own death. Addicts still haven’t figured out what he’s trying to tell them. It was his non-binary thinking that set him free from fixating on the problem. Ivey that clings too tightly destroys the walls that prop it up. The way we describe the problem is part of the problem itself. Ask weird questions.