Ruminations on Einstein’s Dreams by Alan Lightman

The length of this short book was perfect because if it stretched any longer I probably would have gotten tired of it. Each entry in this book is simply a description of a different variation of what time is in a certain world, captured in just a couple pages. The concept was dreamy and at times quite poetic, but the execution felt like something was missing and didn't feel quite as precise or meaningful as I had hoped when I saw that this book is quite acclaimed. 

I still remember the day my dad gifted this to me. I was laying in bed after a long morning of sitting in my online summer calculus lectures and I was feeling pretty burnt out. I hate math and it brings up a lot of bad memories and negative feelings. This is a result of my childhood and the years of attempting to beat the intuition and knowledge required to maneuver through mathematical problems and calculations into myself, but to no avail. I had to take the course to complete my calculus requirements for my degree, a Bachelor of Science that ironically forced me to face much more math and statistics and coding and calculations than I had expected when I was leaving the required math classes of my high school days. It's interesting where life leads you. 

My dad had gone to the thrift store we usually frequent together. He usually brings me along or asks if I want to come before picking me up along the way if he was previously out, he knows how I feel about him going without me. But this time, I had class when he was going and was laying in bed in my usual overdramatic despair over my life when he came in. He handed the thin book to me and said he got it alongside the books I had asked him to pick up when he sent me a photo of the book shelf at the store. I turned it over in my hands, commenting on how I don't even like math. I didn't mean it rudely, but he knows how much of an aversion I have towards math and the big "Einstein" on the front didn't bode well. He laughed it off and said that he read online while picking it out that it requires a bit of physics knowledge to understand it completely. I shrugged and put it on my shelf, going back to my bed to overthink my life choices and the derivatives I had to look forward to after I was done wallowing. 

I have since read it and I didn't think it required much math or physics or science knowledge to grasp the concept, which was time. I didn't care too much for it if I'm being honest, but maybe one day my dad will read it and we can discuss our thoughts like what we do when we both read the same book, a rare occurrence since he's always too busy to read. One of my favorite books is The Stranger by Albert Camus, due to the fact that my dad and I read it around the same time. He spoke so fondly of the translation and translator's note at the beginning of the novel, and urged me to read it because I admitted I skipped over it. We talked about it in the car on our way to the thrift store, him driving down the long sun drenched two way boulevard, my eyes squinting against the mirage of the black pavement as I talked and sat beside him in the passenger seat, the CDs and books we picked up piled on my lap. 

Despite my ambivalence towards the literal contents of the book, I have a soft spot for books that were gifted to me, so this will likely never leave my bookshelf. Maybe this is a bit morbid, but I can imagine myself rereading this some day in the future and missing my dad a lot more than I can bear, absorbing the words about how fleeting time is and its potential if humans had more control than was dealt to us in a new light. I try to avoid such thoughts, as they usually bring me to tears if lingered on deeply enough. 

“One runs the risk of weeping a little, if one lets himself be tamed." - The Little Prince