ANOTHER ONE FOR MY GRANDCHILDREN COMMENTS ON “EINSTEIN — PASSIONS OF A SCIENTIST by Barry Parker         Every now and then I write something I hope my grandchildren will read. Small chance. Actually, they are smart enough that they don’t need my wisdom.        In this case my thinking was stirred by the reading of a biography of Albert Einstein.        We would think that a genius like Einstein might rise like a rocket from childhood into adulthood. No one would mistake him for an ordinary child, adolescent or adult. He would have no problem with choices about where he was going or what he was going to do. His journey would be lineal. It would move in a line from child genius to Nobel Prize to Time Magazine’s “Person of the Century.”        It only seems easy when you don’t know the truth. What you see when you read the story of Einstein is a crooked journey. No straight line for him.        His failures were more than most of us would bear. It only took me three re-writes to get my doctoral thesis approved. His various theses were rejected numerous times. His hopes of a professorship were thwarted time and again. He couldn’t even get a job as a teaching assistant. The best job he could find was in the patent office. He had to publish numerous front edge papers before getting a chance at a real professorship. Fame was arrived at by a crooked course.        Now, I’ve tried to teach my grandchildren this basic principle from their earliest days. One thing I’ve done is to teach them all to sail by about age five. I put them in the little sailing dinghy and showed them how to sail the wind and how to tack.         That’s the trick of sailing. And the trick of life.        You see, when you sail you don’t get “there” by sailing a straight course. You have to tack. And sometimes you never get “there” at all, because the wind makes it easier and better to head someplace else.        If you get “there” it is only because you have endured the necessity of making numerous changes in direction.        Einstein learned to sail for recreation. He had many of his best ideas while out sailing. I suspect the ideas came when the wind was luffing his sails and there was no progress. I use those windless times to duck below for a nap, or else to read. Einstein also learned that life requires going where the wind allows.        That wasn’t all of Einstein. The man had a dream, if not of a destination, of finding answers to questions about life, the world, and the universe. Whichever direction the winds of life seemed to direct him, his eye was on the horizon of his youthful dreams of finding answers to questions no one else was asking.        Rare is the person that ends up doing what he or she wanted to be doing for a career. In fact, most people change careers several times in a lifetime. I’m not sure that is bad or good. It is just the way it is.         I once rescued a guy who wanted to be a sailor, but didn’t know how to tack. I pulled him out of the water one day and took him out in my boat to learn to tack. He spent a couple of hours until he got the hang of it. In a few months he bought a bigger boat than mine and spent many happy years sailing.         You have to learn how to tack. Life, like the wind, doesn’t allow a straight course. Ask Einstein. Ask me. Ask your grandma. Ask anyone.        You’ve heard me say it when I’m sailing and someone asks, “Where are we going?” I always say, “We’re already there. We’re sailing.” You ask, “What’s the old guy saying?” He’s saying that he wants you to enjoy the trip no matter which tack you are on at the moment.          Art Morgan—Summer, 2003