When something’s on my mind, I see it everywhere I look. One day it was left-handed people. When my biological clock starting ticking, it was pregnant women, who suddenly seemed to materialize out of cracks in the sidewalk. It’s the phenomenon of seeing what you look for, of noticing something for the first time when it’s actually always been there.
This year is apparently the year of the chemist for me. Last winter, one popped up at a Shambhala Center mediation session. Everybody sits around drinking coffee and talking before gearing up to sit and do nothing. I heard Lilli talking about her research at a big Seattle Cancer Center and started chatting with her.
Lilli had taken a circuitous route to doing chemistry. She had been a bike messenger in Salt Lake City for many years before deciding to go to college in her late twenties. She told a story of flying into the Salt Lake City airport with a flight attendant who gave the spiel about preparing for landing and added, “Please set your time-keeping devices back 50 years.” Half the plane laughed, the other half didn’t. She’s now a good friend and has been endlessly encouraging about pursuing a job in research.
Last week, I overheard a woman in my workout class talking about Escherichia coli, the bacteria found everywhere in the environment, animal guts, and our own guts. She’s a chemist at a lab at the UW. We struck up a conversation and she invited me to check out her lab, which sounds like big fun to me. I think we’ve been working out together for at least 2 years and I had no idea about her particular obsession.
What else is in plain sight that I’m not seeing?
Successive Approximation 