Prophet Feynman

I had a spiritual moment while watching a documentary about Richard Feynman, a physicist and mathematician who won the Nobel prize for something called quantum electrodynamics. Quantum electrodynamics is some sort of fancy math that allows you to describe the behavior of anything with an electric charge or electromagnetic force (atomic particles, light waves, etc.). Anyway, it appears that Feynman was a bit of a dirty old man, if my interpretation of the documentary is correct. He spent a lot of time in topless bars, covering cardboard coasters, paper napkins, placemats, and other scraps of paper with schizophrenic-like pencil scrawls: mathematics equations, physics diagrams, and “fine art” sketches of the nude women who worked there and the male patrons who were entertained by them. In spite of his iffy personal habits, it is clear that he was truly a genius.

The above-mentioned spiritual moment occurred when one of his students and close friends described his take on the afterlife. He said that Feynman didn’t believe in an afterlife, except in the idea that you live on in people’s memories of you. Thus, if you do good or important things, you leave a piece of yourself with your survivors, and you shape their lives in good or important ways. The same is true with bad things, except, of course, these bad acts leave an evil legacy. I’ve always held this very belief, and there was something very relieving about having a genius confirm one’s personal theories about spirituality and life philosophy. Also, it was very moving and beautiful to hear this straight from the mouth of a weeping physics nerd.

Richard P. Feynman (May 11, 1918 – February 15, 1988)
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