Navigating The Finite: Trust and Doubt and Bittersweet

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Trust and Doubt and Bittersweet

I saw a bumper sticker this evening..."Trust those who seek the truth. Doubt those who find it." To which I would add that your level of doubt should be directly proportional to the enthusiasm in which one tries to convince you of their truth.

I am finding that my possibly last business trip is somewhat a bittersweet affair. I knew that I would miss the people, but I find that I keep looking about the lab, the facilities, even the product I am here to test and thinking "geez, I am never going to see this again." Some of it, the miserable or scary parts, I am not going to miss, but still I find an attachment to this place that is somewhat surprising.

I have worked at this place probably on the order of 25 times in the last 15 years. It is an interesting lab in a great location, right on the water on the Chesapeake Bay. One could not ask for a more scenic place to work.

I find myself walking about in the lab and looking at various artifacts of the place and feeling a sadness. I am sure that I'll get over it, but it was a bit surprising.

You can read all of my retirement related posts at:

http://navfin.blogspot.com/search/label/retirement

1 comment:

An Old BaguetteNovember 22, 2010 at 12:47 AM
Ah, nosalgia! Do you want to get over it?
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Quotes

“The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide for those who have too little.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt

Second Inaugural Speech

Being Irish he had an abiding sense of tragedy which sustained him through temporary periods of joy.” W. B. Yeats

"In answer to the question of why it happened, I offer the modest proposal that our universe is simply one of those things which happen from time to time."

Edward P. Tryon

"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts." Bertrand Russell

“My choice early in life was either to be a piano player in a whorehouse or a politician. And to tell the truth, there’s hardly any difference.”
― Harry S. Truman

"Grant, O God, that we may always be right, for Thou knowest we will never change our minds."

Old Scottish Prayer

“If you are going to sin, sin against God, not the bureaucracy. God will forgive you but the bureaucracy won’t."

Admiral Hyman Rickover

"The feeling remains that God is on the journey too." St. Teresa of Avila

"Wisht I knowed what all the sins was, so I could do ’em."

Grapes of Wrath

John Steinbeck

“The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be.”
- Douglas Adams

Trust those who seek the truth. Doubt those who find it.
. . . From The Bumper Sticker.

Religion is belief in someone else's experience; spirituality is having your own experience.

Source unknown. Passed on by Olga

ESCHEW OBFUSCATION
. . . From The Bumper Sticker

On taking your time & paying attention to details:

"Few, if any, of the world’s problems can be solved with a mere twenty minutes of attention, and yet here, in the complex sociopolitical landscape of the bedroom, we have an opportunity to create bilateral satisfaction."

Ian Kerner

"We humans are destined to live with our feet on the earth and our heads in the heavens, and we can never be at peace because we are pulled both ways."

Kent Nerburn

I am an old man now, and when I die and go to Heaven there are two matters on which I hope for enlightement. One is quantum electrodynamics and the other is the turbulent motion of fluids. And about the former I am rather more optimistic.

Sir Horace Lamb 1932

Quoted in Computational Fluid Mechanics and Heat Transfer, by Anderson, Tannehill, and Pletcher, 1984.

Well, you know the definition of right and wrong constantly changes, but the definition of honesty never does. NPR, interview with Jim Garrett.

“The only calibration that counts is how much heart people invest, how much they ignore their fears of being hurt or caught out or humiliated. And the only thing people regret is that they didn't live boldly enough, that they didn't invest enough heart, didn't love enough. Nothing else really counts at all.”

Ted Hughes

The older I get...

the better I was.

From The Tee Shirt.

My head is firmly up my ass, and it is the 1950s in there.

Sextant in an email to a friend.

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

T. S. Eliot

The H1 (Humvee) will be marketed to "RUGGED INDIVIDUALISTS". These are people who are irreverent and daring and want to be seen that way by other people, Mr. DiGiovanni said. "The rugged individualists are people WHO REALLY SEEK PEER APPROVAL...."

Source unknown.