Science. That wonderful and fascinating world that keeps escaping most of us, mere mortals, from trying to understand, or even, just simply get a glimpse, of how it works and how it makes the world, and the universe, turn around and around. Science. The one subject back at school that I always kept struggling with time and time again. And it’s now, several decades later, and thanks to a nearly two minute long video clip that I have finally found out why I had such aversion to it back then and how I’m coming to terms with it nowadays and start enjoying it for what it is: an open wide window into wisdom and knowledge sharing. Knowledge sharing with a passion!
In a world where we keep worshipping, and longing to become at some point in the near future!, film stars, music giants, sports titans, TV drama queens or whatever other demeaning reality show protagonists du jour, or whatever other unscrupulous types, it’s always refreshing and quite re-energising to bump into amazingly inspiring pearls of wisdom that make, even the most complex of concepts, incredibly easy to understand and grasp.
That’s just what I have experienced while watching this short video clip featuring Prof. Brian Cox where in less than two minutes he gets to explain in very simple terms how everything is connected to everything. Now, if we ever had any reservations about how well interconnected we, human beings, are not just with each other, but with the environment that surrounds us, including the rest of the universe, this would be the kind of video to show those skeptics. Prof. Cox, in just a matter of minutes, gets to explain the Pauli Exclusion Principle and, although there is some controversy as to whether he has got it right, or not (Read through this rather long blog post and the extended comments for more details), what I have found to be the most fascinating thing was not whether he got it right or not, but the passion that he thrives on when sharing stories about the topics you can see he really is truly passionate about.
That passion that keeps him going on and on and on for endless hours talking, in very simple terms, about concepts that the vast majority of us would struggle with big time (Again, read the comments from the link I mentioned above to get a glimpse of what I mean …). How powerful passion can be in storytelling? How long before we can see empowering passionate stories being shared in a business environment to help us transfer knowledge, collaborate effectively, and connect with other knowledge workers? How long before the business world understands that all of these collaboration, open knowledge sharing and social networking are all about sharing stories and that the more passionate you are about them when you share them across the more inspiring they would get? How long before it clicks for the corporate world to understand that we, as human beings, live of stories, of sharing those stories, of relaying relatively simple messages to one another to connect, to build trust, to bond, to eventually be us, even on a business environment?
You know, not sure what you would think, but I could venture to state that if I had science teachers, back then, in my younger years, as passionate and engaging as Prof. Brian Cox is, when telling and sharing stories, I bet that I would not have become an English teacher eventually. Oh, nothing wrong with being an English teacher really, and working for an IT firm over the last 15 years (And still having a blast!), but you know what I mean. Passion, or, better said, the lack of it, can surely help influence, in a perhaps negative manner, how we may all be moving along with our careers, with our commitments, with our own goals, with our lives, you name it.
Maybe Prof. Cox has shown, in that very short video clip, and without him noticing it, the way for us, in the business world, to turn the tide on that demolishing statistic that 8 out of 10 employees in America (And I am sure that very same thing happens in a good number of different countries) are not happy with their jobs. Maybe the reason for that is that somewhere along the way we may have lost that passion for the work that we do; if that’s the case, we need to bring it back, it’s killing us at the moment. and big time! And even more worrying when thinking that two thirds of our lifetimes are spent on stuff that we are no longer happy about, nor passionate enough for. Think that one of those thirds is, finally!, getting enough sleep, now that we know it’s actually rather unproductive not having enough of it.
So that leaves us to two thirds of our lifetime to enjoy, one where we do the stuff we are passionate about, i.e. our private, personal, out of work, quality time, whatever that may well be. And the other third our jobs, the kind of work we do. Isn’t it time then to bring back that passion into work again, not only for what we do, but also for the connections, and personal business relationships we keep building up and that we know are going to help us eventually get work done while we learn doing things much more effectively? Isn’t it due time that we bring back into the business world the power of passionate storytelling that we all once had? Prof. Cox, in that short video I am embedding below, so you can watch it through right away, surely has been leading the way in transforming a potentially too complex, too technical, too wordy, too boring subject like science is, into something fun, playful, educational, entertaining, enlightening, simple enough to grasp and understand and exciting to get involved with!
Maybe, the business world needs to pay a bit more attention to science. At least, to those science pockets where passion is shining through for its excellence. We need it. We very much need it. And we need it NOW!
