Ladies and gentlemen, Oral “Pat” Righteous.
Friends, did you see the way I bounded onto the stage? Bounded. Didn’t shuffle. Didn’t walk slowly with my head bowed. Heck, didn’t even walk briskly. No. I bounded. Why? Because I’m using the energy that, in most people, is just potential.
You know what potential energy is, right? Sure you do. A rock is at the top of a tall, steep hill. Once the rock rolls down the hill, it accumulates a large amount of energy. But, as long as that rock remains on the top of that hill, there is no energy. Only – you got it – potential energy.
When I look at the specks in this stadium, well, friends, I see a tremendous amount of potential energy there. You’re all a bunch o’ rocks at the top of your very own personal hills, just waiting for the gentle push that’ll turn that potential energy into real energy.
That gentle push is what The Physics of Success Seminar is all about.
I know you. I know you hate your job as a waiter…as a postal clerk…a typist…a dental hygienist…whatever. In my…previous life, I met thousands of people just like you. And, I learned a valuable insight: the path to fulfillment already exists within you! Yes, yes, it does!
“But, Pat,” I hear you say, “I can’t change. My life is already set, just like the path of an atom in a Newton-derived deterministic universe!” Friends, I am here today to tell you that that’s just entropy talking. We all know what entropy is. That’s the law that says that energy flows from where there is a lot of it to where there is not so much, until a steady state of equilibrium is achieved. But, friends, that’s not the whole story. Because even within an entropic universe, complex structures emerge. You’re life is not a closed system! Resist the siren song of entropy and work to grow more complexity in your life!
You’re probably thinking to yourself how hard the path of complexity is. Sometimes, it feels as hard as ripping an electron out of its orbital shell. I understand. But, man oh man, the energy that is released when you do!
I know. I spent two and a half years in the Tehatchapee Minimum Security Facility. I lost my family. I lost my calling. I lost 63.7 per cent of my personal holdings. I could have given in to the forces of entropy. Instead, in the Facility library I discovered the beauty of the universe in the works of such men as Nils Bohr, Richard Feynman and, of course, Albert Einstein. Rule-based, yet non-deterministic. Infinite, yet bounded. Unique, yet multiple.
This understanding of the beauty of creation – and how we can all harness this knowledge to make for ourselves a better life – is what the Physics of Success series of books and tapes – available in the lobby at a significant discount – is all about. I would especially like to recommend the Physics of Success 2003 Workbook, which recently celebrated its sixth month on the New York Times bestseller list.
Thank you. Thank you so much.
So, friends, you want to be happy, you want to live a successful life. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t be here. You probably think that happiness is a simple matter of following a formula: do A and B and C and the result will be happiness. A + B + C = happiness. But, friends, that’s cause and effect thinking, Newtonian thinking, old thinking.
We now think of happiness as more of an emergent property of certain collections of rules for behaviours. Respect your elders. Don’t steal. Treat others as you would like to be treated. Put the behavioural rules together and, somehow, magically, happiness emerges out of them.
Now, it stands to reason that if you are not happy, you are not following the right rules. Sadness, misery, unhappiness – these are also emergent properties of behavioural rules. So, what we must do, friends, is determine the rules which govern your behaviour, and rewrite them so that happiness emerges instead of unhappiness, light instead of dark. I know it’s hard – it may well seem impossible. But, as Einstein truly said, “God does not play dice with universe.”
So, if you all are ready, let us begin.