Rummaging through a box of ancient odds and ends from my early life, I uncovered a little black notebook containing sixteen pages of diary, beginning Oct. 16, 1966. I was sixteen years old then, just a sprout, leafless, totally dependent. And there on page two, after a general description of our farm, our family, and my life as a child, I described myself:
“All this has led up to what I am, which isn’t anything special. Out of the ordinary—yes—but special—no. I am somewhat ambitious and have a craving to learn. My ambition is to be a biologist, although that does not mean I won’t end up being a ditch digger. I have a theory (I am always making theories) as to why I am like this. I may as well put it down here, even though it will not interest anyone but myself, in later years. There are quite a few reasons why I have this ambition and will to learn….” And I go on for FIVE PAGES describing why I loved to learn things. Not the things themselves, but why! Theories! It wasn’t enough that I had to understand why other things existed, and how they worked. No. I suddenly put down my books and ideas and asked myself what was going on in my own head. Why did I want to know all these things? And so then I worked on that problem, as if it were about the deer in the forest, solved it, and then went back to everything else. And I’m still doing that. After sixty-seven years. Constantly. Every day. Every hour of every day. And now that I’ve just written that (“Constantly. Every day. Every hour of every day.”), once again, fifty-one years later, I look at those phrases and automatically wonder why. All over again. Why constantly? Why every hour of every day? So here I am, right now, re-analyzing the theories I wrote in those five pages, and adding ones I hadn’t thought of then. Re-weighing, balancing, re-working the percentages. I can’t help it. That’s just who I am. I haven’t changed a bit.
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