I tried to get hold of myself, but after seeing the doctor I felt a definite high. There must be some kind of elation hormone your body releases. You could get rich if you packaged it, but they’d probably make it illegal. It sure made it hard to focus on the road. It must have affected my psychology, too, for now that my ordeal was over, and I should have had less need to talk, I suddenly felt like telling someone what I had just been through.
I started with Ray. I found him strolling out by the pool, freshly showered after his day slinging trash. As he listened, his face contorted into a series of expressions, as if within seconds he had gone through all the stages of grieving—shock, denial, anger, depression, acceptance—and then relief. He grabbed me in a powerful hug. Pressed close against him, I felt the stubble of his beard like fine sandpaper on my cheek. I could smell talcum, mixed with just a touch of the lingering, sour odor of garbage. When he released me all he said was “I’m glad you’re okay.”
We decided I should take the next few days off. Ray, too. Well at least one day. We partied late into the night. The next morning he called in sick, sick with joy for me, and we kept the party going. We had everything we liked, a kind of celebration of life. That meant pizza for breakfast, burgers for lunch, and pizza and burgers for dinner. Plus plenty of joints and beer and cigars in between.
Late in the afternoon Ray dropped his own bombshell. He was leaving. Moving to Bellevue to be with his new love, the Microsoft woman. She said he could live with her for a while up there before he needed to get a job, so he was thinking of giving up the garbage man business and learning how to program computers. Finally putting his mathematical talent to some use. Time to stop punishing himself along with his father, I guess.
Funny how quickly my elation bubble could burst. I was already lonely, and the thought of the person who had become my closest friend in town disappearing made me reel. I should have been happy for him, but it felt like another punch in the gut.
By the next morning our marathon party had made both Ray and me ill. Ray called in sick again, this time legitimately. And I spent the day in bed chewing aspirin and sipping tea, pondering the question, Now that I have my life back, what should I do with it?
It was sweltering outside, “unseasonably warm,” as they put it on the radio. Maybe, but it was a reminder that summer was near. The academic year would soon end. I thought about what I had done, and not done. I hadn’t accomplished much. No great discoveries, not even any publishable work, unless Mark and I figured out our optics theory. But I was still alive. I thought back on my talks with Feynman. To me life and career had seemed very complicated. He made it all sound simple. If an ape could do it, so could I, he had said. But I wasn’t an ape. I worried about how it would all turn out. I figured apes probably didn’t do that. Is that what you learn as you grow older, that it’s all not as complicated or important as you thought?
When I got back to Caltech, I found I had missed some big news. It concerned Constantine. We had never spoken again about the possibility of my working with him. Now his postdoctoral appointment was ending and he had lined up a new job in Athens starting the next fall. That was news but that wasn’t the big news.
Constantine’s claim to fame was his computer calculation of the mass of the proton from the theory of quantum chromodynamics. Now there was a rumor going around: that Constantine did not translate the problem to the computer in an honest way. There is not a unique way to translate equations from the real continuous space of the mathematical theory to a finite lattice of points that the computer can handle, so lattice theory is as much an art as a science. You try to follow accepted principles regarding what makes the best sense in terms of reliability and accuracy. And then you let the computer grind through it. Work in lattice theories is harder to check than purely mathematical work, because though you can follow how the problem is set up, you cannot mentally go through all the steps the computer makes while performing a calculation. According to the scuttlebutt, Constantine had worked backward, knowing what the proton mass was and playing with the parameters of how he set up his particular calculation in order to get the right answer. It is a subtle difference, perhaps, but it is important to disclose.
Constantine wasn’t denying it. And he pretended not to care about the fuss. He just waved his arms and dismissed it with the same all-knowing confidence he had when he discussed Greek or American politics. “What’s the big deal?” he said. “I used what I knew to improve my computer model. Everybody does that.” But he puffed constantly on his cigarettes. Short, joyless puffs.
I felt bad for him, but I was also a little angry. He was my good friend, and I had trusted him. I still felt he was trustworthy on a personal level, but it would be hard to ever have the same respect for him again. I didn’t tell him about my cancer scare.
But I did want to tell Feynman.
I used my mailbox trick to make sure Helen didn’t see me, and then I burst into Feynman’s office with only a perfunctory tap on the door. He was resting on the couch, not working, and didn’t seem to mind the interruption.
To break the ice I mentioned the Constantine controversy. He just shrugged.
“I haven’t read his paper. I don’t know enough about it. What do you expect me to say?”
“I thought you’d say something like, what a louse! He did it because he thought what was important was success, not discovery.”
“Hell, no. I’m not going to psychoanalyze the guy. But what should bother you as much as whether or not your friend fudged his work, is that a lot of people read it and couldn’t tell the difference. There are so many people out there not being skeptical, or not understanding what they are doing. They’re all just following along. That’s what we have—too many followers, too few leaders.”
I sat down. I’d had enough about Constantine. I wanted to talk about me. I told Feynman my cancer story.
He shook his head. “At least a stupid physicist hurts no one but himself,” he said. “You know, I had a lot of doctors who told me they couldn’t operate on me. But then I found the one doctor in the country brave enough to try it. It was a very long operation. Very thorough. Of course, chances are he may have missed some. You can’t know. We’ll just have to see.”
He shut his eyes.
I gazed at him. He looked drained this day, his face pale, thin, and wrinkled. For the first time I saw him, not as a physicist, or a legend, or as my sometime pal down the hall, but merely as an old man.
He opened his eyes. I was staring at him.
“You’re thinking I don’t look so good,” he said.
“No, you look fine,” I lied.
“Don’t bullshit me. And you know what?”
“What?”
“You don’t look so good either.”
I smiled. “I’ve had a rough couple of weeks.” I decided to leave out the part about the two-day party.
He cracked a slight smile. “With maybe some exhausting celebration at the end?”
I smiled back. “Yeah, a little. With Ray. Remember him?”
Feynman shook his head. He had obviously liked Ray. Somehow we got to talking about how Ray’s father browbeat him into hating math.
“My son Carl and I,” he said, “we love talking math.” He brightened, as if a pulse of energy had infused him. “And he’s very good.”
“My dad and I never talked math,” I said. “He never got past high school. The Nazis saw to that. But I always loved doing math problems. I like thinking hard. And I like the feeling you get when you figure something out, or create a new idea.”
“Well then, that’s the answer you’ve been searching for, isn’t it?”
“What do you mean?”
“When I was talking to Ray he said he asked you why you liked physics and you couldn’t tell him.”
“Oh yeah.” I was a little embarrassed that Ray had shared this.
“Well, you’ve figured it out. You like it because you like thinking hard, you like being creative, an
d you like solving problems.”
“I don’t think that’s the answer,” I said.
“What do you mean you don’t think that’s the answer? That’s not my answer. That was your answer.” He sounded impatient. It’s how he got when you weren’t quick enough on the uptake. I tried to explain myself.
“Okay, I said that, but it couldn’t be why I like physics, because it’s not really specific to physics.”
“So?”
“So it applies to a lot of pursuits.”
“So?”
With that, Helen peeked in. “Professor Feynman, is he bothering you?” She turned to glare at me, but continued speaking to him. “I know you were trying to get some work done.”
“It’s okay, Helen,” he said. “He wasn’t bothering me.” Then, to me, “But he’s starting to.”
“Then it looks like I came just in time,” Helen said. “Come on, Dr. Mlodinow. I noticed that after lingering at the mailboxes, you neglected to pick up your mail after all.” She held it out for me. So much for my ruse.
“Give me just one more minute, okay, Helen?”
She sneered, but Feynman didn’t object, so she left. I turned to Feynman.
“I think I see your point.”
“All right.”
“The term’s ending soon, so . . . in case I don’t see you before the summer . . . I just wanted to thank you . . . for all you’ve taught me.”
“I haven’t taught you anything,” he said.
“You’ve taught me about myself.”
“That’s bullshit. What have I taught you?”
“I guess I’m still sorting it out . . . but like just now . . . you’ve taught me a way of looking at the world, I guess. And where I fit in.”
“First of all, like ‘just now,’ I didn’t teach you that, you did. I can’t teach you how you fit in, you have to discover that yourself. And secondly, I'm a lousy teacher, so I doubt I have taught you anything.”
“Okay, then . . . thanks for all the . . . conversations we’ve had. Whether or not you’ve taught me anything, I’ve enjoyed them.”
“Look, if you’re going to insist that I’ve taught you something, I guess I should give you a final exam.”
“Really?”
“One question.”
“Sure.”
“Go look at an electron microscope photograph of an atom, okay? Don’t just glance at it. It is very important that you examine it very closely. Think about what it means.”
“Okay.”
“And then answer this question. Does it make your heart flutter?”
“Does it make my heart flutter?”
“Yes or no. It’s a yes or no question. No equations allowed.”
“All right, I’ll let you know.”
“Don’t be dense. I don’t need to know. You need to know. This exam is self-graded. And it’s not the answer that counts, it’s what you do with the information.”
We locked eyes. His younger face flashed in my mind. The energetic, smiling bongo drum player I had seen pictured in the front of his book, The Feynman Lectures on Physics. A question popped from my lips.
“Do you have any regrets?” I said.
Feynman didn’t snap back that it was none of my business. He didn’t do anything for a moment. I wondered if he would open up about his frustration with quantum chromodynamics. But then his eyes welled up with tears.
“Sure,” he said. “I regret that I might not live to see my daughter, Michelle, grow up.”
XXII
OF ALL THE QUESTIONS I had put to Feynman, the one that always stuck with me the most was the final question: Who are you as a person—and how has being a scientist influenced your character?
He hadn’t liked the question—it was too psychological.
But he answered it.
Given his impatience with all questions psychological, I considered his answer a special gift. A notice to me that whatever monumental importance I might attach to success, in the end it is not success that really matters.
I don’t even know what that means, to understand yourself on a personal level. I hear people talking about things like, “I have to find out who I am.” I don’t know what they are talking about. I can say that certainly I’ve learned an awful lot about myself by studying biology. I know how I am put together. I have a big theory about how I operate mechanically. But that’s not understanding yourself on a personal level.
I can say I am a scientist. I find excitement in discovery. The excitement is not in the fact that you’ve created something, but that you’ve found something beautiful that’s always been there. So scientific stuff affects every part of my life. And affects my attitudes toward many things. I can’t say which is the cart and which is the horse. Because I’m an integrated person and I can’t tell you whether for instance my skepticism is the reason I’m interested in science or my science is the reason I’m skeptical. Those things are impossible. But I want to know what is true. That is why I look into things. To see and to find out what is going on.
I’ll tell you a story. When I was thirteen I met a girl, Arlene. Arlene was my first girlfriend. We went together for many years, at first not so seriously, then more seriously. We fell in love. When I was nineteen we got engaged, and when I was twenty-six we got married. I loved her very deeply. We grew up together. I changed her by imparting to her my point of view, my rationality. She changed me. She helped me a lot. She taught me that one has to be irrational sometimes. That doesn’t mean stupid, it just means that there are occasions, situations, you should think about, and others you shouldn’t.
Women have had a great influence on me and have made me into the better person that I am today. They represent the emotional side of life. And I realize that that too is very important.
I’m not going to psychoanalyze myself. Sometimes it is good to know yourself, but sometimes it isn’t. When you laugh at a joke, if you think about why you laughed, you might realize that, after all, it wasn’t funny, it was silly, so you stop laughing. You shouldn’t think about it. My rule is, when you are unhappy, think about it. But when you’re happy, don’t. Why spoil it? You’re probably happy for some ridiculous reason and you’d just spoil it to know it.
With Arlene, I was happy. We were very happily married for a few years. And then she died of TB. I knew she had TB when I married her. My friends, they told me, don’t marry her, that since she had TB I didn’t have to marry her anymore. I wasn’t marrying her out of a sense of duty. I did it because I loved her. What they were really afraid of was that I’d catch it, but I didn’t. We were very careful. We knew where the germs were coming from and we were very careful. It was a real danger, but I didn’t catch it.
So for instance, science has an effect on my attitude, say, to death. I didn’t get mad when Arlene died. Who was there to be mad at? I couldn’t get mad at God because I don’t believe in God. And you can’t get mad at some bacteria, can you? So I had no resentment and I didn’t have to look for revenge. And I had no remorse because there was nothing I could have done about it.
I’m not worried about my own future in heaven or hell. I have a theory about that that I believe does come from my science. I believe in scientific discoveries and therefore have a view about myself that is consistent. Now I’ve just been to the hospital and I don’t know how long I have to live. It happens to all of us sooner or later. Everybody dies. It’s just a matter of when. But with Arlene I was really happy for a while. So I have had it all. After Arlene, the rest of my life didn’t have to be so good, you see, because I had already had it all.
XXIII
WHAT IS IMPORTANT IN LIFE? It is a question we should all give thought to. The answer is not taught in school, and it is not as easy as it may seem, for a superficial answer is not acceptable. To discover the real truth you have to know yourself. Then you have to be honest with yourself. Then you have to respect and accept yourself. For me, these were all tough tasks.
I had gone through college a
nd into academia in a hurry, wanting to rush ahead with my work, to prove to the world that I had been alive, and that it had mattered. That was an external focus to life. That was Murray’s way. To accomplish and impress. To be an important person, and a leader. It was the classical path. The traditional one. It seemed to be an obvious and worthy goal. I had accepted it without second thought. But for me, it was like chasing a rainbow. Even worse, it was like chasing other people’s rainbows. Rainbows whose beauty I didn’t really see.
Through Feynman I saw another possibility. And just as the discovery of the quantum principle caused physicists to revamp all their theories, Feynman’s example caused me to rethink mine. He didn’t seek the leadership role. He didn’t gravitate to the sexy “unified” theories. For him satisfaction in discovery was there even if what you discover was already known by others. It was there even if all you are doing is re-deriving someone else’s result your own way. And it was there even if your creativity is in playing with your child. It was self-satisfaction. Feynman’s focus was internal, and his internal focus gave him freedom.
Our culture is a culture that, by Feynman’s characterization, is Greek. It is a culture of logic and proof, rules and order. In our culture people who live their lives like Feynman are considered eccentric, for Feynman was a Babylonian. For Feynman, both physics and life were ruled by intuition and inspiration, and a disdain for rules and customs. He ignored the conventional methods of physics, and invented his own, his sum over paths and his Feynman diagrams. He also ignored academic culture and invented his own, eating with the students in the Greasy, or working on his physics in strip clubs, or doing research less for reasons of ambition than for reasons of love. And if his behavior was not approved of, well, what did he care what other people thought?
I chose Feynman’s way. A lot of people aren’t lucky enough to feel a passion for any particular endeavor, or else, like my immigrant father, are too occupied with mere survival to have any choices. Especially after my death scare, if I had a choice, I did not want to squander it. I resolved that, as long as I could, I would spend my limited time of life pursuing goals that moved me, whether or not others found them worthy. I resolved to never lose sight of the beauty in physics—and life—whatever that beauty is, personally, for me.
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