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I thought I was going to die. Maybe not literally. But I was miserable. It was 40-something degrees out, and I was camping on a field in a Go-Zebo - which, yes, is a pop-up gazebo. And it looked like it was going to rain. So hypothermia was not out of the question. How had I gotten myself into this situation?
Be yourself. Whether it’s Shakespeare – “To thine own self be true.” - or Lao Tzu – “The snow goose need not bathe to make itself white. Neither need you do anything but be yourself.” – or a punk band from Cleveland, this is a universal idea we’ve all heard before. It’s a self-help cliché, so I think a lot of people just take it as face value and don’t try to dig any deeper into what it might really mean.
A few years ago, I interviewed Daniel Rothman, a professor of geophysics at MIT. We were discussing how hard it is to talk to the public about complicated scientific ideas like climate change. He said, “The world likes simple stories. And this is a problem that does not really lend itself to a simple story.”