“…one of the strongest motives that lead men to art and science is escape from everyday life with its painful crudity and hopeless dreariness, from the fetters of one’s own ever-shifting desires. A finely tempered nature longs to escape from the personal life into the world of objective perception and thought.”
-Albert Einstein

Despite our powerful intellect and “self-awareness”, we are still biological creatures tossed to and fro by hormonal and instinctual impulses.

Pain, fear, hunger, aggression, lust, longing – all inevitable consequences of life on earth. But escape from the baseness of our daily trod through life is possible. Through expressions and appreciation of art and science we can lift ourselves out of the biological soup and confinement of personal existence into the greater world of beauty, thought, and ideas.

“When you look at yourself from a universal standpoint, something inside always reminds or informs you that there are bigger and better things to worry about”
Albert Einstein, The World As I See It

Sometimes – many time, perhaps – we find ourselves in the grip of some self-absorbed dilemma of our own choosing, sure that the universe, and all those in it, must share our angst – or would if they only knew.

Chances are most people are caught up in their own personal drama and the universe is simply to vast, mysterious, and beautiful for our petty concerns to matter.

To paraphrase another historic figure: Ask not what the universe can do for you, but what you can do for the universe.

“The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge.”
-Albert Einstein

If God created everything then the clearer and more rational our understanding of ourselves, the universe, and our place in it, the clearer our understanding of God himself. Fear keeps us looking at the ground, lashing out at anything laying beyond our narrow gaze, understanding little.

We slowly conquer our fear and look up toward that which is both the creator and the created. All roads lead eventually to what is unknowable, to the leap of faith.

Perhaps it is best to reach that point with our eyes wide open.

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“Any man who can drive safely while kissing a pretty girl is simply not giving the kiss the attention it deserves.”
-Albert Einstein

Of course, Albert said this long before the days of cell phones, blackberries, and GPS.

How disappointed he would be that our attention is often on neither driving or kissing the pretty girl.

Are we a society with mass Attention Deficit Disorder?

“Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.”
-Albert Einstein

Sitting in judgment of Truth and Knowledge is for fools and impostors.