The importance of inspiration
I teach Biology. I have been involved in some form of Biology for as long as I can remember. Yet, most of what interested me was ecology. I was always outside as a kid, fishing with my Grandfather.
So, I went to college to be a Wildlife Biologist, which is a venerable profession. I was gladly moving along that path, until I picked up a book called “The Man who mistook his wife for a hat.”
It is a series of essays about many of the exotic ways your brain can go wrong. The title story is about a patient who came to see a Dr. Oliver Sacks, who saw faces as objects and objects as faces. There was no resolution. Yet, he left the reader comforted to know that the patient had found some semblance of image in his music. The stories go on, and get stranger.
Dr P. was a musician of distinction, well-known for many years as a singer, and then, at the local School of Music, as…www.odysseyeditions.com
This book made me consider for once that the inner workings of organisms was as fascinating as that of the outside world. With that I began to shift my career path to that of teaching biology.
The man who wrote this book is dying of cancer. He wrote about it so simply here:
I LOOK forward eagerly, almost greedily, to the weekly arrival of journals like Nature and Science, and turn at once to…www.nytimes.com
One looks to many forms of inspiration as they get older, and they can come from very unexpected places. I want to thank him for pointing me towards a career I care very deeply about.
It is my hope that you find inspiration when you need it and that it sets you on a path that can bring you as much joy as mine.
