The Life…

The Fear of Speaking

The Fear of Being… The pros and cons of living.

This may prove to be a weird intersection of introspection. I am not even sure how to get there, yet. It’s tangible, but invisible. I have grappled with it quite a bit in this life, still find myself befuddled. A sideways entry into it comes from one of my side podcasts, Smarter Every Day. Here’s an engineer, a scientist, a dad, a sociologist in the sense we all are, only he adds his engineering overlay, and a really cool guy. He tackled a backwards bike. He tackled NASA. And he is still okay.

I Was SCARED To Say This To NASA… (But I said it anyway) — Smarter Every Day 293

Let’s start with the backwards bike. You may be asking, what the heck, but it’s simple. Well, the idea is simple, the practicality is not. Imagine your bike, only if you turn left your wheel goes right, and vice versa. The first time you ride it, you will crash. The second time you ride it you crash… The third, fourth, fifth, and up to 8 months you will crash. It takes about 8 months to learn how to ride a backwards bike.

His son did it in less than 3 months.

The brain is plastic. It can learn new tricks. Baby brains learn more tricks faster than older brains, but all brains are capable of learning. That’s one lesson to be derived from this story. There are other lessons. Like don’t give up. Read things from previous…