More Incomplete

A couple of times I have mentioned the psychologist who uttered those immortal words “have the courage to be incomplete”. Now take a look at me aged around five trying to please everyone, as I always did for all those years.

After we moved to Norfolk, I started to take sport seriously, mainly running (cross country). I began to enjoy it. Each year my school held the cross country race for all age groups and I trained hard to be successful in mine. Then the day came. Several hundred boys raced across the football field towards the gateway leading to the lane, the begin of the race. As we all converged, someone trod on my left gym shoe and it came off. Panic! What to do? Stop and put it on again as fast as possible or run on with one shoe. I stopped, put the shoe on but by then I was almost last. But I was complete.

I would get back to running some 20 years later but I did not enjoy it that much. By then I was a research chemist and fascinated by molecular structures. I also found time to let my imagination run loose which I can best illustrate by my very own theory to get from A to B without running. Imagine being at the equator where the circumference of the Earth is 40,075 km. One day lasts 24x60x60 (86,400 seconds) So the Earth is spinning at 463 m/sec. Now imagine jumping in the air for one second. You should land 463 m to the west of where you jumped. Simple. Traveling to the east is of course a big problem… The speed of sound is 343 m/sec so my 463 m jump also produces a a large bang.

Now that we are all so concerned with climate change and conservation, there must be a Nobel Prize any day now for such a contribution as mine. Unless of course you insist in going east…

It has been in my head for some time now. No-Do-Day: a special day you reserve for when you will not do things. For a lot of people, this is a Monday. The weekend behind you and all those silly meetings at work you are meant to go to. Fridays also suffer from thoughts about what the weekend might bring. Go on, try it out! You will be amazed how happy you become. If you are a Civil Servant of course you have done this already for most of your career. No-Do-Days are also part of the being incomplete therapy.

Ever thought about not raising pigs? No, not one of mine but well worth reading.