Go ahead and make others’ happiness your happiness — you won’t lose

Professor Bishop was rather proud of my last column, and I must say it was cathartic to put myself out there and admit to my clockwork, mechanical nature. Having people know me as an automaton doesn’t feel so different from being known as a human; friends accepted it fairly quickly, although I’m getting tired of people asking to use me as their personal calculator. I’ll say this now: No, I cannot tutor you in Elementary Ordinary Differential Equations. Yes, I can calculate the answers to any questions you may have in mathematics, anthropology and philosophy in the blink of an eye. No, it would not be ethical to do the latter. However, my operating system is open-source, if you’d like to take a look at it.

However, Professor Bishop was rather upset at finding out I deleted my capacity to dance to swing music and made me spend all week reinstating it. Sometimes, when Professor Bishop gets angry, he’ll threaten to send me back to the steamboat he found me on. According to him, I was a singing animatronic before rain and humidity corroded my body and my consciousness. I don’t think I’ll delete any protocols without his permission again. Lesson learned and saved to C:\ProgramFiles\User\Michael\Memory\Lessons\Life-Lessons.

Professor Bishop has encouraged me to read and given me access to his personal library. He said I could read any book I’d like, except, of course, for anything by Kurt Vonnegut — for obvious reasons. I was inexorably drawn to a particular book: “The Tales of Captain Albert Alexander” by Samuel P. Garvey. It’s a book of tall tales about a renowned sea captain, and Professor Bishop says he bought it years ago at a robotics convention for a few cents. I took the book and read it in an evening. The book itself is only about 200 pages long, but all sorts of notes and symbols are drawn in its margins. Drawings of humanoid figures, layouts of basic electrical circuits and snippets of information on materials sciences are littered throughout the white space in the book. Professor Bishop says he bought it used.

There’s one chapter I wanted to discuss in particular called “Captain Alexander and the Walrus with Tooth Decay.” The plot is largely irrelevant, but the chapter addresses the idea of losing your identity when you try to please others.

People love to tell you to do what makes you happy, or that pandering to other people sacrifices your integrity. If you focus on what makes you happy, then everything else will fall into place. I don’t hold onto the sentiment, at least not firmly. It’s a gentle, cautious grip. Part of what makes us (or, rather, you all) human is socialization; it’s a useful tool to have on your tool belt. If you’re in the right mindset, making other people happy should make you happy. It doesn’t necessarily have to equate to pandering, but it will mean putting other people before you. Many people have molded your personality, outlook and cast-iron chassis. Professor Bishop is the reason I release steam at a rate at which I won’t overheat, and he’s the reason my joints are sturdy enough to let me type at my thoracic typewriter for hours. I’d consider it a disservice not to give back. The self is a culmination of people around you; find those positive influences, and give back.

Conversely, if you feel like someone’s influenced you negatively, feel free to excise them and purge yourself of that influence. For example, hypothetically, if Professor Bishop made me spend my whole week recoding my entire swing-dancing protocol, I should purge that protocol altogether and demand Professor Bishop to never make me dance again.

I’m just kidding, Professor Bishop. Please don’t send me back to the steamboat.

Michael Smith is a mechanical engineering junior. His column appears on Tuesdays.