The Great Ocean of Truth
Your life, according to the smartest person to ever live.
In 1665, a five-year-old boy named John Morley was found dead in his home.
So Isaac Newton locked himself away.
Morley’s death marked the beginning of the Great Plague of London, an epidemic that killed nearly 25% of London’s population in 18 months.
City dwellers fled to the countryside. Newton returned to his family's sleepy farmland estate.
Over the next year of isolation, Newton sat and thought.
And those thoughts turned into theories.
And by the time the Great Plague ended 1666, Newton had discovered a few things.
Calculus
The laws of motion
The theory of universal gravity
Just little stuff.
Surely someone so accomplished would see themselves as a little more advanced than the average person, right?
But Newton, whose most famous work, “Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica” has a title that makes you break out in hives and a Wikipedia page so dense it makes smoke come from your ears, had this to say about himself in his memoir:
"I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me."
Let's unpack that quote.
𝗡𝗲𝘄𝘁𝗼𝗻: “I do not know what I may appear to the world.”
𝗧𝗮𝗸𝗲𝗮𝘄𝗮𝘆: The real danger of echo chambers is that they make you forget your brilliance.
Isaac Newton is likely the smartest person to ever exist. And his self-analysis was, “I don’t know how other people see me.”
Pick your greatest strength. Maybe it’s a talent like teaching or parenting being a great conversationalist. Or maybe it’s more emotion-based, like compassion or selflessness or empathy.
In that strength, you are remarkable.
To you it doesn’t seem that way. But to outsiders looking in, they’d give anything to have that part of you.
—
𝗡𝗲𝘄𝘁𝗼𝗻: “To myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary.”
𝗧𝗮𝗸𝗲𝗮𝘄𝗮𝘆: Greatness is a product of joy. As Naval Ravikant says, “Do what feels like play to you, but work to others.”
—
𝗡𝗲𝘄𝘁𝗼𝗻: “Whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.”
𝗧𝗮𝗸𝗲𝗮𝘄𝗮𝘆: No matter how big today seems, it will always be swept over by endless tomorrows.
Time, as far as we know, is endless.
Knowledge doesn’t have boundaries.
Achievement is one great tree, and when a breakthrough is made, that tree spawns 10 more branches to climb.
Stay humble. Your accomplishments are a raindrop in an infinite reservoir.
Stay hopeful. Your disappointments are, too.