Ash Wednesday

I did not go to Church today. Never in my life have I put ash in my forehead, nonetheless right now I am in a time of passage in my life. This note may be understood fully, just by me, and one special reader.

"Ash Wednesday derives its name from the practice of placing ashes on the foreheads of adherents as a sign of repentance."

Taken from the link above.

Do I repent?

I make mistakes. I try, and then I see what went wrong. I try again, and so it goes, on, and on, and on ..

I am in the hands of people with less power, and more need, than I thought before. I can help, yes, but can they help me with the rest of my life? I feel that they will try, but in the last analysis, the buck stops with me.

I have to come with a good decision, given the Information I have.

I believe that most of theoretical physics is overvalued guess work. Statisticians, are less presumptuous, they openly tell us that they don't know, but their best guess is such and such. Reductionist Theoretical Physicists like me, promise ourselves and the rest of the world, certainty.

I believe in certainty less and less as the final moment of my life approaches. I do not even know when that moment will be.

I know I was born and I did good work in most of my school activities. Research wise, I have not been successful. I don't give up though, and my Ash Wednesday meditation is on how to succeed as a researcher.

People close to me have succeeded. I believe I have made a good mental model of important ideas, and I hope to apply them from now on. Nevertheless there are some basic things I haven't done, like building a war chest. I am really financially disarmed.

I know that as time passes something grows and something fades away. Success, I think, is having the growing part that you chose beforehand, and the one you didn't want, fading away.

My next move should be guided on my best assessment of where am I right now and where am I going? If I use a "Law of Nature" to achieve that, the better, but more and more, I am starting to believe that those laws do not exist. E pur si muove! In my case I should say; but I have to decide.