… that I answered these questions.
To remind the class, these were put to me by asked me here.
I think that since February, I’ve had some time to think (internal voice: “Yeah, right!”) on these questions, and finally might be ready to post some answers.
Josh, they’ve been sitting in my “Inbox” since then, as a constant reminder of a commitment to respond to them.
1) If you could go back and do it all again, what is the one thing you would NOT change, under any circumstances?
2) What book has had the most influence on your life?
3) What was the silliest thing you ever did in public?
4) Why don’t you want people to know how old you are? (Note: I am not asking how old you are, just why you don’t want us to know. And remember, you have to answer truthfully)
5) If you could have any one super power, what would you want, and why?
And I put that line in to make people like you crack up. Feel free to ask me questions in return
1. I have to say, quite truthfully, that there is nothing that I would change. My life has been a pretty interesting ride, with its ups and downs, and it has molded me into the person I am today. Yes, I wish I had been smarter in some of my business dealings, but there are absolutely no regrets. I’d like to think that I’ve learned from everything, even though sometimes the knowledge isn’t really evident until much later.
2. This is going to sound odd, but the book is “Goedel, Escher & Bach”. Dad has owned that book for pretty much all of my remebered life, and I’ve read and re-read it throughout my development years. It helped put things into a different perspective, and the idea of using some kind of metaphors to describe ideas in a way that a layman can understand some of the more complex ideas of philosophies. I’ll admit, I should probably delve into it again sometime soon, as I’ve forgotten a large chunk of it, and some of the heavier concepts were beyond me then, and I think I might be better equipped to understand them now. Note: Never say “I don’t know”. Say: “I don’t know yet!”
3. How can I even begin to try and remember the silliest thing I’ve done in public? I think something that rates mentioning is going to sleep in a Bank Mizrahi at about 2am on a random weekday, during my years on the Yishuv, when if you didn’t leave Jerusalem at 6pm, you were stuck in town for the night. A couple of friends and I found a place to huddle for the night, relatively warm to a typical Jerusalem winter, about 9 years ago. I’d call that silly, and fairly public.
4. My age is a closely-guarded government secret. The reason for it is classified, and far beyond your security clearance, citizen. But seriously, I believe that too much stock is held with age, and that a person should be evaluated on a different level. I’ve met highly intelligent and capable young people, and it never occurred to me to ask their age. On the other hand, I’ve met even more older childish people, so my age should never be an issue. I am ass old as I need to be. I think I was born at 35, and it’s been a downhill slide since then.
5. Superpowers are a tricky subject. Are you allowed to have a superpower, without the baggage that comes along with it? For instance, to be Superman, that would mean that not only are you unique on Earth, your entire people have been wiped out. So I don’t know if there’s a specific superpower that I’d want, but one that comes to mind is the power to control time. It seems that everything can be accomplished, as long as you have enough time. To think that I could go for a leisurely walk for an hour, and not have it at the expense of something else, because it always is…. damned useful, I say.
Anyways, this has been a long response, probably longer than thought it would be, but finally I get to cross this off the list of things I needed to get done.
Time isn’t on my side. There’s never enough time. We make time. If we don’t, it’ll leak out elsewhere, and get picked up by a bunch of monk-type characters, and to quote some exquisite literature, by my favorite author:
Because of the nature of time, the universe is, instant by instant, recreated anew.
Therefore there is in truth no past, only a memory of the past. Blink your eyes and the world you see next did not exist when you closed them.
Therefore the only appropriate state of mind is ‘surprise’. The only appropriate state of the heart is joy. The sky you see now , you have never seen before. The perfect moment is now.
Be glad of it.
– Wen the eternally surprised –