Eureka

 16 March 2021

“Scrambled Eggs, oh my baby how I love your legs - diddle diddle diddle diddle diddle - I believe in scrambled eggs”. 

Thank god it is not a singing contest otherwise I would have been disqualified for not remembering the words and for singing so out of tune! 

Good evening my fellow Toastmasters and friends. 

Paul McCartney woke up one morning in 1964 with this tune in his head and thought “hey, do I know this tune?”

It took a lot of convincing by his family and friends before he realised that it was a new tune that came to his head, just like that! That same tune was titled Scrambled Eggs for weeks before the song “Yesterday” was written and became the most recorded song in history. 

300 years before that epiphany, a man was innocently sitting under the shade of a tree, when suddenly, he was hit in the head by a falling apple. That man was Sir Isaac Newton and that was the moment that he had an inspiration for his landmark work on the law of gravity! 

In 300BC, Archimedes, the greatest mind in ancient history was summoned by the King of Sicily to determine the weight of gold in his crown without destroying it. It was when he was having his bath that he made a discovery on how to do it. He jumped out of the tub and ran onto the street naked shouting Eureka, which means “I found it” in ancient Greek.  

History, whether it was 3000 or 30 years ago, is full of great eureka moments. 

What about you? Have you ever been in the shower, or woke up from your slumber when suddenly, out of the blue, Eureka! That problem that has been gnawing at you, the previously unsolvable puzzle has suddenly become so clear and so obvious. I certainly have my fair share of AHA moments especially when I am doing my easy run, when my thoughts dissipate into thin air and there was nothingness. Suddenly it was EUREKA! 

A Moldovan psychologist Ina Catrinescu was intrigued by these Eureka moments and embarked on a research to find out more about what triggers these AHA moments or Eureka.

In all of the above stories, these innovators or geniuses had prior different ideas and experience working on the subject matter. But what is unique about this AHA moment is that it is a single moment when all the great ideas coupled with the experiences come together at the same time.  

In practice, that typically happens when we are relaxed. Sir Paul McCartney just woke up from his sleep when he had the tune singing in his head. Sir Isaac Newton was sitting under the tree doing nothing when he discovered gravity. Archimedes was chilling in his bath when he had the Eureka! 

Apparently our brain is a lot more active when we are at rest or asleep. It is during this state that we put events in our lives into context, this is when we develop memory and this is also when new neuro-pathways are made. For example, we all know what suitcases are and we know what wheels are for. But it requires a new connection for trolley bags to get invented.

These connections, these breakthroughs are as unique, as limitless as our experience and memories. Genius is not a chance occurrence that is reserved for the select few. There is a genius in each and everyone of us. 

There are thousands of breakthroughs that are just sitting behind our eyelids. Let us go through the world not limited to what we can see, what we can think of but let us be limitless by the infinite possibilities that we can conjure up as soon as we relax or close our eyes and let our minds wander.

Thank you.