The water in the class is being moved by nothing more than a steady tone. The frequency of the tone is the water’s resonance frequency. That means that this is the perfect sound to get that water jumping. The tone is just right, strongly amplifying the oscillations in the water. If it was a little higher or a little lower, the effects on the water would be much smaller. It’s as though the water is humming along with the tone.
A more playful explanation is offered by wikipedia:
One familiar example is a playground swing, which acts as a pendulum. Pushing a person in a swing in time with the natural interval of the swing (its resonance frequency) will make the swing go higher and higher (maximum amplitude), while attempts to push the swing at a faster or slower tempo will result in smaller arcs. This is because the energy the swing absorbs is maximized when the pushes are 'in phase’ with the swing's oscillations, while some of the swing's energy is actually extracted by the opposing force of the pushes when they are not.
Imagine yourself pushing the swing. You want it to go very high. What do you do? Your first instinct might be to simply push as hard and fast as you can. But this wouldn’t be the best way to make the swing go higher. If you push too fast, you’ll actually be wasting a lot energy because you’ll be opposing the swing’s natural timing. You need to get in time with the swing. Stand behind it, wait for it to come to you, then give it a little help on its way back the other direction. You’re synergizing with the swing. It’s much better and more effective than just trying to tell it what to do.
I see this as a great metaphor for life.
The greatest feeling, the most fulfilling, the most validating, the most triumphant and certain feeling is when you know you’re doing what you’re supposed to be doing. You can be in a quote unquote “good situation” where everything is great—your job is good and it’s very secure, you live in a great place, you’ve got a great girlfriend—and still find yourself feeling strangely unfulfilled. On the flip side, you can be working 80 hour weeks for shit pay, wrecking your health, just getting by on the skin of your teeth—and somehow feel like you wouldn’t trade it for the world. Maybe you’re helping to raise awareness about a cause that inspires you. Maybe you’re an extremely dedicated coach at a lesser-known college athletics department. Wherever you are, what matters is that you know that’s where you’re supposed to be. You are where life is telling you to be, and that feeling is more valuable than health, more valuable than money, more valuable, even, than happiness. There’s no more feeling than knowing exactly who you are and exactly what you are doing. A person with purpose is an invincible thing.
Now, that might be easy to say, but it’s not easy to do. How do you find this purpose? Where do you begin to look for your natural resonance frequency? You certainly can’t find it by thinking about it. You’ll be distracted a thousand times before you reach your final destination by the very tricky human tendency towards wishful thinking. It’s all too easy, when you’re looking for the answers, to convince yourself that the path you’re supposed to be taking is the easiest one you see. If you’ve been offered a nice scholarship to law school, and you don’t know what else to do next, you’ll be very tempted to convince yourself that that’s what you should be doing. But just because someone hands you a pile of money to do something doesn’t mean that doing it will resonate with you. It only means that it’ll be an easier path to start down.
Don’t get me wrong here. If you don’t know what’s next in your life, then it’s very sensible to take the easier softer way. Making the most of a law school scholarship while you have the chance is a very prudent thing to do. On the other hand, if you don’t feel that resonance when thinking about law, and you do feel it when thinking about something else, then you need to reconsider. Push with the swing.
But how to make the call? How can you learn what you need to know?
I haven’t figured this part out at all, but I think all that a person can do is try as many different things as possible. Try to get as many different experiences as you can. Talk to people who seem strange. Go far and wide and look for things you’ve never seen before. Read widely. See a lot of movies. Try having different kinds of jobs. Give different kinds of creative self-expression a try. Oh, and somehow find time to process it all and figure just how you feel about all these things. It might be impossible to do all these things, but that’s not important. More important is the idea of discovery. Somewhere out there, or somewhere inside yourself, is the life that is just right for you—the purpose that will make you powerful. You’ve got to search with determination. It’s not going to find you. You’ve got to find it.
Good luck, folks. Lots of love.
Randy
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