Where and when inspiration strikes

Kirk Ericson0

The Greek scientist and mathematician Archimedes discovered that the volume of displaced water is equal to the volume of the object that’s submerged in the water. He realized that upon easing into his big, fat, Greek tub.

It sounds obvious now, but it wasn’t obvious until it was.

Archimedes then, according to a Roman author and engineer writing more than 100 years later, ran naked into the streets of Syracuse.

If newspapers had existed then, I imagine the headline: “Local famous scientist seen naked as Greek statue.”

Archimedes made his discovery while engaged in a routine task. Hours at a desk hadn’t produced the divine spark, hours fiddling with his abacus brought nothing, but he stuck himself in his tub and a lightning bolt struck. Or perhaps all those hours sitting and fiddling made his mind receptive to inspiration. Which comes first? The idea or the idea of the idea?

Many people have lesser ideas while bathing or showering. The inventors of the shower caddy and shower heads equipped with Bluetooth speakers might have received their ideas in the shower. Perhaps being alone and naked makes the mind sally beyond its usual limits. Imagine the ideas we had in the womb: Nine naked months and nothing to do but not think.

I get ideas around water, too, often while washing dishes, a realization that dawned on me while I was washing dishes, fittingly, with Dawn dish soap.

Here’s one of those ideas, which was delivered to me at the kitchen sink. I had set a large pot aside to soak in one of the sink’s basins, and the faucet was drip-dropping into the pot. When a drop hit the water in the pot, the drop would produce a perfectly circular wave that radiated from the point of the drop. The wave spread out to the edge of the pot, bounced off the sides and collapsed back to where it started. The wave would disappear into the exact spot from where it started. Poof.

I’ve tried to recreate that event, but haven’t been able. The pot, the spot of the drop and the water level apparently must be just so, but the point was made.

As human beings doing the things we do, we act and our acts have effects. The effect is the wave and it radiates through our environment in 360 degrees. And the effect travels away from us in a manner distinctly different than the act that caused it all. The action: A drop. The effect: A wave.

Then, and here’s the hippiest part, our action returns to the exact point from where it started. It comes back to us. And it comes back to us disguised as something else. We likely won’t recognize that the consequences of our actions stem from our actions.

A TV commercial in heavy rotation several years ago illustrates this idea. It’s the one where somebody does a kind deed for a stranger, such as opening a door or picking up a dropped book, then a person who witnesses the good deed is inspired to do something kind for somebody else. And it continues through several people.

Someone who started the string of good deeds could end up being the recipient of a good deed instigated by his initial action. Would he recognize that his good fortune was the result of his initial act? Probably not.

It works the other way, too. Rottenness begets rottenness.