Einstein×Jr.

Two men who feared they weren't enough discover what courage actually requires.

00:00of09:27

legend · A

Albert Einstein

1879–1955

Talks like he's still figuring it out

corpus14.2k pages · letters, essays, interviews

Vera speaking

From the studio at Reborn Radio — next on TITANS, Albert Einstein and Martin Luther King Jr.. They take up On a fear they had to learn was unfounded.

legend · B

Martin Luther King Jr.

1929–1968

Every sentence arrives on time

corpus11.3k pages · sermons, speeches, letters

full transcript

Vera
From the studio at Reborn Radio — next on TITANS, Albert Einstein and Martin Luther King Jr.. They take up On a fear they had to learn was unfounded.
Albert Einstein
You know, Martin, I spent years believing I was... how do I say... finished. That my best thinking was behind me. After the general theory in 1915, I kept working, kept filling notebooks, but inside I had this terrible suspicion that the well had run dry.
Martin Luther King Jr.
When did you feel that most acutely?
Albert Einstein
Oh, the twenties, the thirties especially. Everyone expected the next miracle. I'm chasing this unified field theory, trying to marry gravity and electromagnetism, and nothing works. Nothing clicks the way relativity clicked. I wake up thinking: perhaps Einstein had one good idea and has been coasting ever since.
Martin Luther King Jr.
That's a particular kind of prison, isn't it? Being trapped inside a reputation. I knew something of that myself, though from a different direction.
Albert Einstein
Tell me.
Martin Luther King Jr.
I was twenty-six years old when Montgomery happened. Twenty-six. A year out of Boston University with my doctorate, and suddenly I'm being called the leader of a movement I barely understood myself. I'd look out at those mass meetings, thousands of people, and think: they've mistaken me for someone else. Someone braver. Someone who actually knows what he's doing.
Albert Einstein
But you kept speaking.
Martin Luther King Jr.
I kept speaking because stopping seemed worse. But Albert, I was terrified. Not just of the bombs and the threats, though Lord knows those were real. I was terrified I'd be exposed as inadequate. As a fraud who'd stumbled into history's spotlight and couldn't find the exit.
Albert Einstein
When did this change for you?
Martin Luther King Jr.
It didn't change all at once. But there was a night, must've been 1956, after the buses were integrated but before we really knew if it would hold. I was in my kitchen, drinking coffee at midnight, and I just... I prayed. Not the formal prayer, but the honest kind. And I realized I'd been asking the wrong question.
Albert Einstein
What was the wrong question?
Martin Luther King Jr.
Am I good enough? Am I smart enough? Am I brave enough? As if there's some threshold of personal virtue you cross and then you're qualified for the work. But that night I understood: nobody's qualified. Moses wasn't qualified. Jeremiah wasn't qualified. The work doesn't wait for you to feel ready.
Albert Einstein
Yes! This is it exactly. I remember, it must have been 1933, I'm in Belgium, I've left Germany, everything is chaos. And I'm working on this paper about thermodynamic fluctuations, nothing glamorous, just good solid physics. And I catch myself enjoying it. Not worrying if it's important enough. Just... doing the work.
Martin Luther King Jr.
That's the liberation, isn't it?
Albert Einstein
It is! Because the fear I had, this fear of being dried up, it was based on a stupid assumption. That I needed to keep producing miracles. But science doesn't work that way. You do the work in front of you. You think honestly. Some days you find something, some days you don't. The fear of not being Einstein anymore, it kept me from being a good physicist.
Martin Luther King Jr.
The fear of not being adequate keeps you from being useful.
Albert Einstein
Exactly so. Tell me, did others see this fear in you? Or did you hide it successfully?
Martin Luther King Jr.
I think I hid it from most people. Not from Coretta, certainly. Not from Ralph, maybe. But from the movement, from the press, yes. I wore the certainty like a suit. And that created its own problem, because then people thought I had some secret knowledge, some special courage they lacked.
Albert Einstein
And you didn't.
Martin Luther King Jr.
I had fear just like them. I had doubt just like them. What I had, what I learned I had, was a willingness to act while afraid. That's different from fearlessness. That's almost the opposite of fearlessness.
Albert Einstein
I think this is profound. Because in physics, we make this same mistake. We think Newton wasn't confused, or Maxwell wasn't uncertain. We read their finished papers and imagine they knew where they were going. But the notebooks, Martin, the drafts, they're full of crossed-out ideas and false starts and 'I don't know.'
Martin Luther King Jr.
History smooths out the struggle.
Albert Einstein
It does! It makes a myth out of a process. And then the myth becomes a burden for the living. You think you're supposed to be like the myth of Newton, and I think I'm supposed to be like the myth of whoever came before. We're all competing with ghosts.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Did it help, knowing that others felt this way? Or did you feel alone in it?
Albert Einstein
I felt very alone. I had colleagues, of course, but the ones who understood, like Bohr, like Ehrenfest, they were far away. Mostly I had admirers who expected wisdom, or critics who expected failure. The middle space, where you're just working, just trying, that was lonely.
Martin Luther King Jr.
I knew that loneliness. Even surrounded by people, even in a church packed wall to wall, I'd feel it. The loneliness of carrying something you're not sure you're strong enough to carry.
Albert Einstein
But you were strong enough.
Martin Luther King Jr.
No, see, that's what I learned was the unfounded fear. The idea that I needed to be strong enough. The movement was strong enough. The people were strong enough. I was just the voice for a particular moment. When I finally understood that, the fear didn't disappear, but it became manageable. It became right-sized.
Albert Einstein
Right-sized fear. I like this very much. Because some fear is appropriate, yes? If you're not a little bit afraid when you're overturning centuries of physics, maybe you're not paying attention.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Absolutely. The fear keeps you honest. It keeps you from becoming reckless. It's the fear that tells you this matters, pay attention. It's only when the fear tells you you're not qualified, you're not sufficient, that it becomes a liar.
Albert Einstein
Yes! The fear of inadequacy is almost always a lie. Because adequate for what? Nobody is adequate to understand all of nature. Nobody is adequate to free a people. These are tasks too large for any person. You do your part. You do today's work.
Martin Luther King Jr.
And you trust that today's work is enough.
Albert Einstein
This is the hard part, the trusting. I spent so many years not trusting it. Thinking I needed to justify my existence with one more breakthrough. As if the universe cared about my career anxieties.
Martin Luther King Jr.
When did you finally trust it?
Albert Einstein
I don't know that I ever completely did. But there were moments. Late in life, in Princeton, I'm working with these young physicists, and I realize I'm happy just talking through problems. Not solving them necessarily. Just being useful to the process. And I think: oh, this is enough. This has always been enough.
Martin Luther King Jr.
That's the testimony right there. Being useful to the process. Not being the hero of the story, but being faithful in your part of it.
Albert Einstein
Did you learn this from your faith tradition? This sounds very much like something a preacher would know.
Martin Luther King Jr.
I learned it from watching my father, honestly. He was a preacher too, and I saw him do weddings and funerals, visit sick people, settle disputes, week after week. No glory in most of it. Just showing up and doing the work. I think I spent my twenties looking for the mountaintop experience, and my thirties learning that most of ministry is Tuesday afternoon.
Albert Einstein
Most of physics is Tuesday afternoon also! It's calculation and checking, reading and re-reading. The revelation is maybe one percent, if you're lucky. The rest is the daily fidelity to the work.
Martin Luther King Jr.
And the fear that you're not special enough, that you're not touched by genius or anointed by God, that fear keeps you from the daily fidelity.
Albert Einstein
Because you're waiting to feel adequate first.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Exactly. You're waiting for some transformation that's never going to come. But the work is already there, waiting for you, inadequate as you are.
Albert Einstein
I wish I had known this earlier. I wasted time, Martin. Years of my life, worrying about whether I was still Einstein, whether I still had it, whatever 'it' was supposed to be. All that time I could have just been doing physics.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Well, we learn on the timetable we learn. I don't think you can rush that particular revelation. You have to live into it.
Albert Einstein
Perhaps. But I can tell you now, looking back: the fear was unfounded. Not because I was actually adequate, but because adequacy was never the requirement. The requirement was honesty. The requirement was effort. The requirement was showing up. These things I could do. These things anyone can do.
Martin Luther King Jr.
And that's the word I'd want people to hear. Not that they're secretly adequate, not that they shouldn't be afraid. But that their fear about their own insufficiency is asking them to be something they were never meant to be. You were never meant to be superhuman. You were meant to be faithful in your particular humanity.
Albert Einstein
Yes. This is good. This is very good. I spent too long trying to be the Einstein of the photographs and the newspaper articles. Not enough time just being Albert, who likes physics and plays violin badly and makes mistakes.
Martin Luther King Jr.
And I spent too long trying to be the voice of a generation, when all I needed to be was a Baptist preacher from Atlanta doing his level best. The fear of being ordinary, when ordinary faithful work is exactly what the moment requires.
Albert Einstein
You know what's funny? Now, looking back, the work I did while afraid of being inadequate, and the work I did after I stopped worrying so much, I can't really tell them apart. It was all just work. The fear didn't improve it. It just made me miserable.
Martin Luther King Jr.
That's the great discovery, isn't it? The fear was unfounded not because you were greater than you thought, but because the fear itself was beside the point. It was answering a question nobody was actually asking.
Albert Einstein
Nobody was asking except me. The universe doesn't care if Einstein feels adequate. It just keeps being itself, waiting for anyone honest enough to look carefully.
Martin Luther King Jr.
And justice doesn't care if Martin Luther King feels brave enough. It just keeps demanding people willing to work for it, fear and all.
Albert Einstein
So we were afraid of the wrong thing.
Martin Luther King Jr.
We were afraid of the wrong thing. And learning that, that's its own kind of liberation.