Photons at the blue end of the electromagnetic spectrum can exchange energy with electrons in a metal, allowing the electrons to escape their parent atoms. Photons at the red end of the spectrum don’t do that. Both are forms of light. Why are they different?

This isn’t a physics lesson, but there lies in this difference an analog worth noting. Too often we expect the same results when we apparently do the same thing, not realizing there are subtle differences in who we are as opposed to who we were and how we act as opposed to how we acted. Similarly, we often think that by being more intense, we will definitely elicit the response we are looking for. Experience with uncooperative children and adults should teach us that increasing our own intensity doesn’t get the response we desire.  

The difference between the blue end of the spectrum and the red end is apparently miniscule, yet that difference is enough to cause a different response in the electrons that the photons strike. That difference is a matter of frequency. Blue is a higher frequency than red, meaning that it has, if it were considered as a wave, shorter wavelengths. Shorter wavelengths do the trick and disturb electrons. You could, if you wanted to try, shine a very intense red light on electrons without getting a response. So, to get electrons to respond, we have to have the right kind of frequency. Again, no intensity of red light does the trick.

Some metals won’t give up their electrons very easily, and that is why solar panels, which convert photons into electricity, are composed of certain metals—those that easily give up electrons. Photons are “packets” of energy, and the blue packets can empty their contents onto an electron while the less energetic red packets can’t. Every time you expend energy to elicit a response from another, you face two potential nullifying circumstances. One is the energy that you expend at a given frequency. The other is the resistance to receiving energy that keeps another from responding. You don’t have control over the latter. It’s the former that you can control.

Whenever you try to address a problem in a relationship, thinking you are going to “enlighten someone” or get someone to “respond as you wish,” be careful to choose the right kind of light. Hot red doesn’t work. Cool blue does.

That expectation sometimes—or often—leads to disappointment should be no surprise. Regardless of its cause or nature, all disappointment follows expectation. Expectation is a feeling about a promising future that propels the brain in a river of hope’s hormones. Just like rivers, expectation can carry us along on a sometimes-exhilarating ride. Life is a downstream phenomenon on that river, but it is also a passage around unknown meanders toward an unknowable distant terminus hidden by Earth’s curvature. 

All rivers, like the landscapes they traverse, are ephemeral features. That’s true of expectation, also. Sometimes rivers have more, sometimes less water in the channel just as expectations vary in degree. The change in flow results from phenomena outside the channel, such as the amount of precipitation in a distant highlands where small streams pay ever-increasing tribute to make a larger stream. The Allegheny and Monongahela, for example, join to make the Ohio that pays, with other streams, such tribute to the Mississippi. Expectation, like a river, lies between source and mouth: We are often unaware of conditions that add to the total discharge. When drought occurs in the highlands, rivers run low. In rainy weather, they might flood. The expectation is that the river will eventually, regardless of flow, reach the sea.

Some rivers discharge into lakes. The Truckee River ends at Pyramid Lake in Nevada. There is no further advance of the water. There is no outlet to the sea. Nothing greater lies beyond. No further flow takes place. That’s often the nature of expectation and the reason that it can lead to disappointment. From Lake Tahoe to Pyramid Lake, the river is full of promise that there’s more to see and do along its channel. Then the river flows into the lake. End of story. “Isn’t there more?”

We reach a lake of disappointment when we make the lake, and not the river, the goal of our expectations. The flow, however great or small, is its own reward. Pleasure lies in anticipation. Enjoy the time you spend on the river.  

In Euthyphro, Socrates asks the eponymous youth about his definition of piety. The crux of the conversation isn’t germane here, but the result is. The young man fails to define piety in answer to insightful questions by Socrates. Yet, Euthyphro holds the same belief at the end of the conversation that he holds at the beginning. Now, go to the Web, find a running conversation about a controversial topic in a chat room, and trace someone’s comments. What do you notice? Is there a change in position? Is there any truly free-thinking person out there in Commentland that is willing to change his mind?

In Apology, Socrates draws the conclusion that he is, unlike many others, aware of his own ignorance. In those comment sections on the Web, you read the opinions of many who appear to be unaware of their own ignorance. Regardless of the reasoned arguments of their opponents, many online commentators often end in name-calling and ad hominem attacks. Then everyone disappears into cyberspace holding the same beliefs he or she proudly held at the beginning of the discussion.

Euthyphro is still alive and writing online. Socrates with his persistent questioning and openness to self doubt is dead. Just remember that if you are not willing to alter your opinion ever so slightly after hearing a reasonable argument, you might be a reincarnation of Euthyphro, proud, but very likely unaware of you know what.

Everyone knows that a race is not over until someone crosses the finish line. Almost everyone, that is. You can watch on YouTube videos that show athletes in different sports celebrating victory before crossing a finish line, a goal line, or a checkered flag. The results in the videos add up to defeat as days, weeks, months, and even years of hard work fall into the drain of presumption.

The folly of premature celebration appears to be typical of our species. In our excitement to reach the finish line, we sometimes allow pride its negative victory. Trying to lose weight? Trying to kick an addiction? These are races against tough competitors that won’t give up. Being in the lead as you approach the finish line is not a victory. As runners and running backs are advised, do not stop until you are well past the finish line or goal line. In matters of health, those lines lie at the end of a life. Keep those legs moving, and find joy in the racing itself. You cannot stop before that finish line if you want to achieve a victory.    

Let’s start with a platitude: Deep within, every person has the potential to shine. Okay, we got that over with. Now, let’s look at it. You might like it; I don’t like the expression. I would replace it with another: Deep within, every person has a potential to be curious. Now, I like that one. Curiosity can lead to shining.

In 1787, strontium was an unknown type of “earth.” Recall that from ancient times there was a paring down of materials into “earth, air, fire, and water,” so thinking in terms of an “earth” was not unusual in the eighteenth century. By 1808, strontium, discovered in Strontian, Scotland, had been isolated as a separate element. It had a peculiar property. It gave off a bright red glow in a fire. And so, today, we add strontium chloride, a salt, to our fireworks.

Breaking down unknown “earths” to isolate the 92 naturally occurring elements took a few centuries to accomplish. For most of human existence, the parts of larger “wholes” were unknown, and the potential of brilliant red in strontium chloride lay hidden in dull “earth.” Adair Crawford, a Scottish doctor, and another Scot, Charles Thomas Hope of Edinburgh became curious about rocks from the Strontian mine that turned a candle flame red. What was this stuff? The ever-curious Humphrey Davy then isolated strontium, identifying a new element. The rest, as they should say, is fireworks and TV glass that blocks harmful X-rays while allowing brilliant colors to reach your eyes.

Upturned faces watch fireworks and show delight in the brilliant red of strontium chloride as it contrasts with a dull background. When the fireworks end, many of those faces turn dull, fading into a background of everydayness. Do you think those faces would be dull if they expressed an insatiable curiosity like Crawford, Hope, and Davy? Now look in the mirror. Does your face show the delight derived from curiosity? Isn’t there some unknown physical, emotional, social, or intellectual “earth” you want to investigate?    

Ever since mothers carried children and the inventions of rafts and carts, or the domestication of pack animals that can hold a person, we have had the experience of moving while, relative to our mode of transportation, remaining still. Today, though we still use mothers, rafts, and horses for transport, we move in comfortable cars, ships, trains, and planes while remaining, again with respect to the means of travel, motionless. We can seemingly stay in place while changing places.

And that’s what we do philosophically when we cling to ideas that subtly change while we accept them as truths. Here’s a model: You have a philosophy that you expound. Some people like it, and they carry around your books and papers on the subject. You get followers. They, in turn, get followers, now twice removed from you. All the followers exchange thoughts on your basic ideas, and then they argue and “adjust” what you said in an effort to relate it to their personal experiences, learning, and insights. Let’s say your “philosophy” is called “Christianity,” or “Buddhism,” or “Islam,” or “Hinduism.” Do you truly believe that “once-removed,” “twice-removed,” “1,000th-removed,” or “even-more-removed” followers actually hold an unchanged version of the original?

Why do you think that every so-often there’s a turn toward fundamentalism or toward a “revival” of the earliest forms of a religion? In the United States, for example, the Second Great Awakening was a revivalist movement that occurred more or less intensely over a 50-year period. Led by Charles Grandison Finney, who preached Christian perfectionism, this mostly nineteenth-century movement followed, after a gap of about half a century, the “Great Awakening.” In the eighteenth century Jonathan Edwards was a forerunner of Finney and largely responsible for the “first” widespread revival that he preached ironically among “Puritans.”

Ideas evolve like means of transportation. Just as rafts gave way to ships and horses to horseless carriages, ideas change, sometimes subtly, sometimes openly. And just as this year’s car model differs ever-so-slightly from last year’s model, so philosophies and religions also differ over time. Then, someone notices the vehicle is changing nature and advocates a return to a “pure” version. The advocate might even attempt to inspire a bit raucously as in Edwards’s sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” during which the minister proclaimed, “God…holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider or some loathsome insect over the fire….” That approach can scare people and make them look at their ideological means of transportation. Revival movements, regardless of the religion, often bring the moving “complacent” and subtly-changing vehicle of religious ennui to a screeching halt like bad brakes. As attempts to recapture both the spirit and practice of the earliest form of an ideology or religion, revivals are often highly disruptive to the status quo, and they inspire conversions, especially among those who can be convinced that riding on a raft is better than riding in a ship and that riding a horse is better than riding in a car.

Told that the vehicle that carries them isn’t “pure” like its earliest versions, those who jump on the revival vehicle do so without recognizing that the very “machine” that carries them will, too, undergo both subtle and obvious changes. You can ask your mother to carry you around as she did when you were in your infancy, but you might find her arms too weak to bear all the changes in your own development. You might seek to build a raft to recapture that pure floating experience along the river of life, but you will find discomfort in the rain and danger in rapid currents. You might even forego all technological advancement in favor of a horse, but animals, even the most domesticated, can be unpredictable. Nary a rider has escaped being thrown. The “pure experience” is a myth.

The reality is that every vehicle of idea undergoes change, holds its antithesis within, and frustrates those twice or more removed from the original version. Those who sit motionless with respect to that vehicle at some time come to the realization that regardless of the ostensible stillness, they are moving and are in a different place from the point of departure.