ADVICE FOR A MEANINGFUL LIFE FROM AMELIA EARHART
For eighty-Seven years the world has been wondering about the “mystery” of Amelia Earhart’s disappearance. Well, it wasn’t exactly a mystery: her plane crashed in the ocean and she died. She was attempting to be the first person – man or woman – to fly around the world. It was her second attempt. Did she run out of gas? A mechanical failure? Where in the ocean is the plane? The specifics of her demise are unknown.
Possibly, until now.
On February 8,2024, an $11 million expedition using sonar technology, believes they may have found Earhart and her plane. Now we can all rest easy. “One of the greatest unsolved mysteries of the twentieth century,” as one account put it, may now be laid to rest.
Earhart seemed to be addicted to breaking records: First woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean; first solo non-stop flight across the United States by a woman; first person to fly solo from Hawaii to the United States; flew solo from Los Angeles to Mexico City, and then on to Los Angeles.
In a newsreel aired in theaters around 1935, her husband asked her why she continued to take these risky flights.
Her answer, which was probably prepared in advance, is worth repeating.
Because I want to…this isn’t a reason to be apologized for. It is the
most honest motive of mankind’s achievements. To want in one’s
heart to do a thing for its own sake; to enjoy doing it; to concentrate
one’s energies upon it – that is not only the surest guarantee of its
success, it is also being true to oneself.
She was spot on.
Pope Julius II, who sponsored painting the Sistine Chapel in1508, pressured Michelangelo to hurry and finish. “Why do you take so much time perfecting your art?” the pope reportedly demanded. Michelangelo replied, “When I can,” or, “when it satisfies me,” or “when it satisfies art.”
Or as Earhart would say, “because I want to.”
We associate Thomas Edison with the light bulb, phonograph, and other electronic gadgetry, but at the end of his life, he was racing against the Grim Reaper to find the right rubber plant. He had become a fanatical botanist. He had all the money and fame a person could want. What he really wanted was simply to solve the problem before he died. After he turned eighty, said his wife, “Everything turned to rubber…We talked rubber, thought rubber, and dreamed rubber.”
to concentrate one’s energies upon it…to do it for its own sake…
The same could be said of movie director, Steven Spielberg; he was born to make movies. He hated school because “from age twelve or thirteen I knew I wanted to be a movie director and I didn’t think that science or math or foreign languages were going to help me…During class I’d draw a little image on the margin of each page of the history or literature books and flip the pages to make animated cartoons.” When Spielberg was seventeen, he spent the summer sneaking into Universal studios to hang around with movie makers. The need was always there: innate, obsessive, powerful and relentless.
Spielberg was being true to oneself.
A frustrated talent can be an agony, while a talent sprung free is most glorious. When you listen to people pursuing their inborn talents, you are hearing pure joy.
“Mortal as I am,” wrote the ancient astronomer, Ptolemy, “I know that I
am born for a day, but when I follow the serried multitude of stars in their
circular course, my feet no longer touch the earth; I ascend to Zeus himself to
feast me on ambrosia, the food of the gods.”
To want in one’s heart to do a thing for its own sake; to enjoy doing it…
“A major stream of human accomplishment,” wrote sociologist, Charles Murray, “is fostered by a culture in which the most talented people believe that life has a purpose and that the function of their life is to fulfill that purpose.” Breaking aviation records might seem like an ego-centric waste of time adding little or nothing to human knowledge. Amelia would say, “So what. Give people the freedom to feast on ambrosia, and watch human knowledge, creativity, innovation and accomplishment soar into the stratosphere like a Jupiter rocket, like the Salk vaccine, like Beethoven’s Fifth, like the discovery of America, like the iPhone, like the mystery of the stars, like Spielberg’s films, like the moon landing.”
Earhart’s bones, if found, will tell no tales; but her words are for the ages.