Perhaps one of the most inspiring story that impacted my life is no other than the come up of Albert Einstein himself and his theory of General Relativity (GR). This theory is not widely taught in school; the closest topic that was taught (at least in my time) was Special Relativity (SR). I didn’t learn about GR until late years of my bachelor study. And it really took some brain gymnastics (and mental breakdowns) to understand the beauty of GR.
In a brief manner, Einstein, who wasn’t even a scientist at the time, proposed the idea that gravity at universe scale was not a force, but rather the result of interaction between mass and spacetime. This of course led him to be ridiculed by the community of science, because Classical Mechanics (or Newtonian Mechanics, which widely taught in school) works perfectly on almost any problem that requires it. Not until years later when the theory was proven to “make sense” that scientist started to accept the theory and granted him the title “genius”; which later adopted by the pop culture and made him the most prominent icon of intelligence in the world.
If you’re not a physicist, the theory of GR might not impress you that much. But I believe these two lessons remain important and continue to be relevant on today’s world:
- Whatever your status or title you have right now, remember that it should not prevent you from being innovative beyond that status. Let yourself explore new ideas and challenge the old ones. Some of the greatest ideas in human history didn’t come from someone with great status, nor it was intended to be what it was.
- On the other side, we should always open our mind to comprehend these new ideas. Some of these might be intimidating to our current technology and system, but as of today, we have a lot of tools with very great accuracy to calculate and analyze the their impact. As the story of Eistein told, the craziest idea might just be brightest one.
To close this quick writing, I’ll let the man himself finish it with one of his most famous quote:
“I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.” — Albert Einstein
Also, here’s a very good video that explain Einstein’s theory of General Relativity (also where I got the picture on the top from). Feel free to watch it!
