It only has to work once and other things Interstellar taught me
When frustrated Murphy says that they had already run the math to build the spaceship they were building, Dr Brand says “It only has to work once, Murph”.
I watched the movie alone as I didn’t want my friends to ruin the experience. I watched it again because I wanted my brother to watch it with me. I’d have watched it again if I could, with my grandfather.
While a lot of people hated the movie and tried to find loopholes in the science that was backing it, I absolutely loved it. It was full of lessons that you can apply to your own lives. You don’t have to agree with something to benefit from it.
Albert Einstein failed 99 times, Thomas Edison a 1000, but they never quit. They didn’t give a rats ass to the odds. And then they succeeded, nobody cares about the rest.
A whole bunch of VC firms are running on the belief that one of the startup that they invest in, would return them far more money than they spend on all the startups combined. And it has worked out fairly well for them.
It is okay to fail, but only if you learn from it. If you keep learning, it will eventually work out and as they say It only has to work once.
It’s okay if you die out alone in the vast cold of space
And other selfless acts
Well maybe not. It sounds too harsh. But knowing that you serve a purpose is a feeling that can overcome the greatest of odds.
Twelve astronauts were sent into the wormhole in the hope that at least one will find out an inhabitable world.
For Mars One 202,586 applications were received. All those people had volunteered to go on a one way trip to a planet whose atmosphere was ripped away by solar winds millions of years ago. Which resulted in the inability of the planet to retain any heat. The temperature at night can get as low as 100 degrees F. And It is a planet where nothing grows, despite Mark Watney.
Research says that the people who associate themselves to a higher purpose or values are found to live a healthier life. It might sound ironic that you live a healthy life to give it all up by dying in space. But even less extreme cases of philanthropy can do wonders.
There’s a person I know who went around handing money to every poor or homeless they saw. When I asked ’em he said that it feels better than anything else in his whole life.
You have to become somebody before becoming the ghost of your children’s future
My grandfather told me stories about war and about space and how the black holes worked. He told me that there was an actual robot lying around in an old cupboard, I spent the entire day looking for it. When I didn’t find it I got upset, he told me that it wasn’t here, coz we hadn’t made it yet. And that We’d make one when I grew up.
My grandfather worked in the railways, during the times of war. He used to meet hundreds if not thousands of soldiers from different armies. By the time he retired he had amassed a million stories. He had travelled the length and breadth of the country and was smartest guy in my whole extended family. He had a day job, four kids and a million other responsibilities. He still had the passion to find out how black holes worked and that their gravity was so intense that they collapsed in on themselves until they couldn’t shrink further.
When I was six, he once told me that there could be a black hole in our galaxy and that if we get sucked in, Earth would shrink to the size of a sugar crystal or smaller. I was amazed at this new discovery and spent the whole night looking at the stars and freaking out at the possibilities.
I want to be like him, and Cooper. They both were explorers, and had a million stories. When I grow old, I want to have an endless arsenal of stories for whoever cares to listen.
If you enjoyed reading it, please recommend and share.
This is the story of how I’m planning to take over the world, one skill at a time.
