Over the break, we needed to read a piece of the book Einstein’s Dreams by Alan Lightman. The book is a series of short stories imagined by Albert Einstein during the time he was questioning the idea of time which would eventually lead to his theory of relativity.

While I was only supposed to read the last quarter of the book, I decided to purchase it so that I would read the whole thing. I haven’t done it yet, but I plan on doing it soon. The book is pretty small and wonderfully reviewed.

Here are my thoughts on the part that was assigned to me:

I was assigned the last quarter of the book. I was afraid that I was going to miss something since each story seems to be chronologically arranged in the book, but quickly realized it had nothing to do with it. I’m still intrigued as to why then, title each piece in a chronological order. The whole book is about the questioning of time, what it is, and what it could be. It seems fitting that the story titles are yet another way of doing that.

Regarding the stories, my favorite one was the one where time is a flock of birds and if you trap one, you manage to freeze that moment. I think it was a very interesting visualization of time, and an accurate one too. Time is beautiful, but ever-fleeting. And, even if you capture a moment and freeze it for a second, it will still disappear eventually.