3 Life Lessons from Math, Physics & My Dog
A couple of years ago, we lost our 14 year old Weimaraner, Adicus. Anyone who knew Adicus (and anyone who’s spent time with Weimaraners in general) knows just how big his presence was. He was our best buddy, most demanding aristocrat, most loving companion.
Years later, we still feel his presence. And he left me with three important life lessons I’ve been meaning to share. But I haven’t been quite up to it, until now. (It helps that we have a new addition to our family, an English Setter rescue we call Louis. He’s a free-spirited sprite who has filled our lives with heaps of laughter and joy!)
What’s remarkable is that Adicus’ life lessons align perfectly with classic math & physics principles. Perhaps this is not so surprising and reflects the deep wisdom and beauty of the laws of nature. After all, as Bertrand Russell said, “Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty.”
So here you go: three life lessons from Math, Physics, and Adicus!
Life Lesson 1
“I am here, make room” | Archimedes’ Principle
Whenever Adicus walked into a room, you knew it. He wanted to be noticed. If you were sitting on the sofa or a chair, he would plop down just close enough that you had to scooch over to make room. Adicus was never apologetic about his own presence. He was self-assured and knew his worth – and wanted you to know his worth, too.
His example was particularly powerful for me. Growing up as a child, I became aware early on that my natural exuberance, curiosity, and zeal could overwhelm people (I only recently learned there is an official label for people like me called ‘giftedness’). I also learned over the years that most people don’t like women – especially smiley, curly haired women – to be assertive, outspoken, and strong-willed. So as an adult, I practiced making myself smaller and quieter.
Though many of you who know me may question my success in this (hey, I try!), the unexpected impact was that I internalized my own smallness and quietness. I inadvertently learned to be apologetic about asking for people’s time, seeking help, and even existing. I doubted my own value and was worried people would dislike me if they could feel my presence.
But Adicus showed me you can be your exuberant self and still be lovable and loved. He helped me reconnect with my self-worth. Adicus reminded me that I am made of matter, and I matter.
Adicus’ “I am here, make room” attitude is like Archimedes’ Principle, which explains why an object placed in fluid will displace that fluid.
Just as the fluid has to “make room” for a submerged object, Adicus unapologetically expected people to “make room” for him. And my takeaway is that I – we all – should not be afraid to ask people to “make room” for us.
Though it’s a lesson one could easily overlearn, for me, for now, it’s spot on!
Life Lesson 2
“Find wonder in the routine” | Fourier Transform
As adult life becomes more demanding, I increasingly cherish sleep. I’m sure many of you can relate. So bedtime is a very exciting time of day.
Adicus apparently picked up on this. Although he once resisted going to bed and settling in for the night, he came to love bedtime, just like me. Over time, we developed a bedtime routine: I would sing the word, ‘bedtime’; he would joyfully run to his bed and plop down, expecting to be promptly tucked in and sung to.
His bedtime routine was unbearably cute. But it could also be a drag, especially when I was exhausted and didn’t feel like tucking in or singing. And this was true for many of his routines: his extended evening bunny hunting walk; his expectation that we top his kibble with cooked chicken every meal; his anti-grooming ritual involving phases of evasion, then passive resistance, and finally reluctant but dramatic acceptance (think dignified death march).
Despite the inconvenience and sometimes seeming mundanity of these routines, they became our go-to “classic Adicus” stories. In retrospect, they are some of our fondest memories.
And this is how Adicus taught me that the simplest, everyday routines are magic moments in disguise.
Adicus helped me realize that many of the most important moments in life occur experientially, not sequentially. In other words, one bedtime sequence is super cute. But a collective experience of daily bedtime routines is heart-melting. I wouldn’t trade the bedtime routine experience – however inconvenient or mundane it may have felt at times – for anything.
Finding the beauty and wonder lurking within the noise of the daily grind is a lot like how Fourier Transforms find signal in the noise. For example, a Fourier Transform can help you identify chimes or chirping birds that are otherwise shrouded in ambient noise.
The Fourier Transform does this by transforming sequential noise – what you would hear with your ear – into frequencies. You can then see and focus on frequencies of interest. Similarly, “transforming” Adicus’ routines from sequential chronicles into collective experiences helped me find wonder in those routines and see the extraordinary in the ordinary.
And it’s a reminder to take a step back and do this “transformation” more frequently – before all that wonder is only a memory.
Life Lesson 3
“Don’t preserve life, live it” | Integral of a Curve
Adicus was rarely concerned with preserving himself beyond the basics (eating, sleeping, etc.). Even as he got older, he would never let aches and pains keep him from chasing bunnies or playing. Though he did adapt to new physical limitations as they evolved, he never stopped doing the things he loved.
Now, Adicus was a genetic phenom. He loved using his physicality and showing off his athleticism. One memory in particular stands out: We were hiking through the woods, and he decided to go off-trail. As he romped through fallen leaves and broken branches, he came upon a choice: go straight for a clear path or fork left for a dramatic leap over a log.
You can guess which one he chose. True to form, he landed beautifully and kept going. The sheer joy on his face was enough to make anyone smile ear to ear.
Of course, his leap could easily have gone wrong. He could have missed the landing and hurt himself badly. In fact, we were often tempted to protect him from himself. And in some cases we did step in, like when he wanted to chase bunnies into a traffic-heavy road. But we came to realize that Adicus’ go big or go home attitude was an intrinsic part of his character and essential to his self-actualization (to the extent dogs self-actualize).
We could have ensured a super safe life for Adicus, but he would have felt perpetually depressed and deprived. He would not have been living his life but rather passing the time.
All of us navigate through life managing risks. We protect ourselves and loved ones from harm and danger. This is normal – essential even.
But what I learned from Adicus is that if we skew too far in favor of safety and security, we create a new and paradoxically depleting risk: living a long life devoid of the very things that make us feel alive.
The integral of a curve can help us visualize a mathematical representation of Adicus’ “quality of life over quantity of life” philosophy. Imagine a curve, f(x), on a graph that represents the quality of your life at any given time. You can think of the area under that curve – which we would calculate by integrating f(x) – as your Total Life Quality.
Picture it: If you have a very long life curve with low quality levels over time, the area under that curve – your Total Life Quality – will be small. On the other hand, if your quality of life levels over time are higher, then even if your life curve turns out to be a little shorter, your Total Life Quality will be greater.
I don’t know about you, but when it’s time for me to go – morbid as it may be to think about – I’d rather look back and say: ‘I lived an awesome, full life’ than ‘I lived a long, riskless life’. Which is why, like Adicus, I don’t want to preserve my life. I want to live it.
Jack London (via James Bond in ‘No Time to Die’) perhaps said it best: “The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.”
RIP Adicus.
What a unique perspective on life! As a previous engineering nerd myself, I loved the parallels from life to math. And my two fur-babies are a huge part of my life, so anything relating to a dog wins in my book. I especially appreciated thinking about quality of life as an integral. I've used the mantra of quality over quantity for a long time. Thanks for sharing!