On parenting precocious children.
Setting the stage: A father is talking to his son Oskar (who is the main character in this book). Oskar has just read the first chapter of A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking, and he is feeling depressed about how relatively insignificant his life is in teh grand grand scheme of things. Oskar asks his father if he can think of a soultion to this problem…
“Which Problem?”
“The problem of how relatively insignificant we are.”
“Well, what would happen if a plan dropped you in the middle of the Sahara Desert and you picked up a single grain of sand with tweezers and moved it one millimeter?”
“I’d probably die of dehydration.”
“I mean righ then, when you moved that single grain of sand. What would that mean?”
“I would have moved a grain of sand.”
“Which would mean?”
“Which would mean I moved a gain of sand?”
“Which would mean you changed the Sahara.”
“So?”
“So? So the Sahara is a vast desert. And it has existed for millions of years. And you changed it!”
“That’s true! I changed the Sahara!”
“Which means?”
“What? Tell me.”
“Well, I’m not talking about painting the Mona Lisa or curing caner. I’m just talking about moving that one grain of sand one millimeter.”
“Yeah?”
“If you hadn’t done it, human history would hve been one way…”
“Uh-huh?”
“But you did do is it, so…”
“I changed the course of human history!”
“That’s right.”
“I changed the universe!”
“You did.”
“I’m God!”
“Your an atheist.”
“I don’t exist!”
—-
Source: Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, by Jonathan Safran Foer. Page 86.
