Painting is just another way of keeping a diary
“Painting is just another way of keeping a diary.”
–Pablo Picasso
It’s been a long while since I’ve watched Apollo 13. Between that time and today I’ve forgotten what it means to worry about someone. Watching that movie again tonight made me realize that I’m not the only person in the world that I have an effect on. There are hundreds of people that I directly impact and countless more that I indirectly impact. It’s not always clear what impact I have in the world, but it only takes a few thought experiments to realize the full extent of my reach. One of those arcs reaches out into my circle of friends. That group of friends is fairly far reaching and extensive. My friends cross many time zones and cultural boundaries.
However, like the astronauts on Apollo 13 I am a person that comes through when it counts. To quote the movie, “if they could get a washing machine to fly, my Jimmy could land it”. I sometimes feel like that. There are times when I feel like I’m flying alone and then there are time when I feel like I’m flying the whole damn world. It’s in these times when I’m flying the whole world that I realize how much my actions impact the whole of my population.
Tonight I paid four dollars to watch this movie and it only served to remind me how much my world and theirs is impacted by science. I can’t live by my chain of events as the only path by which things could belong. The world happens outside of our experience and we have to accept that these things are true.