This week's Sci-Light

A culture of dreams...

I was scanning the internet for today's sci-light and found the story of Bertrand Piccard and the solar plane he conceived of and partnered with André Broschberg of the Swiss Institute of Technology to build.  Read all about the plane powered by 12,000 photovoltaic cells in Diane Cardwell's NY Times article Cross-Country Solar Plane Expedition Set for Takeoff. 

Photo credit:  Jim Wilson/The New York Times

It wasn't the description of the plane, the expedition or the applications that struck me although they were fascinating.  It was the culture that Mr. Piccard described in his home as a child.  His grandfather, Auguste Piccard, was a physicist and friends with Albert Einstein and Marie Curie.  He designed a capsule for a balloon allowing he and a partner to be the first to fly into the stratosphere.  Father Jacques Ernest-Jean Piccard traveled with US Navy Lt. Don Walsh almost 7 miles in a pressurized bathyscaphe called Trieste to the deepest point on Earth--Challenger Deep of the Marianas Trench.

Son/grandson Bertrand Piccard said this in the article, "I thought this [incredible things] was the normal way to live and I was very disappointed to see that there are a lot of people who are afraid of the unknown, afraid of the doubts, afraid of the question marks."

Perhaps you're feeling that way--not knowing your next step, not getting what you wanted for the summer, unsure of how to find a job or where to even begin looking.  If so, this article is for you.  Life is not a series of knowns; it is a series of unknowns.  It is in the adventure of living--the highs of success and the depths of dispair and everything in between--that we actually experience the fullness of living.

Take a deep breath.  Don't try and map out the next year, the next month, the next day.  Live in this one.  Think about what you enjoy and find a way to experience it today.  Be open to the opportunities that come and grab them.  Study hard.  Learn much.  Do your work.  Explore your dreams.  Do what is to be done.  Live. 

For me, that means I write a blog...

...what is your culture of dreams.