Choose a tough, world-class problem, one that requires only a sheet of paper and a pencil, like Goldbach’s Conjecture or Fermat’s Last Theorem, or a question in pure natural philosophy that doesn’t need pencil and paper at all, like the origin of the universe, and then throw yourself entirely into research. Think only of planting, not reaping, and as you concentrate, an entire lifetime will pass before you know it. That’s what people mean by settling down. Or do the opposite, and make earning money your only goal. Spend all of your time thinking about how to make money, not about what you’ll do with it when you make it, until you’re on your deathbed clutching a pile of gold coins like Monsieur Grandet, saying: ‘It warms me…’ The key to a wonderful life is a fascination with something. Me, for example—” Dad pointed to the watercolors
“Suppose you take one of these small candles and stick it into a desert dune. If there’s no wind you may be able to light it. Then: leave. What would it feel like to watch the flame from a distance? My boy, this is what life is, fragile and uncertain, unable to endure a puff of wind.”
Where time had once been infinitely precious to me, now I couldn’t spend it all. For the first time I knew what it meant to relax and take it easy. For the first time I saw that life was full of richness. For the first time I had the realization that everyone I had looked down on and pitied in the past had it better than me. What they were living was the most reasonable of lives.
Imagine the eighteenth century, or even earlier—the scientists who were trying to invent computers would no doubt have imagined that the reason they failed was because their thinking wasn’t sophisticated enough. But now we know that it was because their thinking wasn’t simple enough.”