Category Archives: fragments

On randomness

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The nature of a random event is both complex and chaotic, but again, predictable in a certain way. When you flip a coin, the result is both random and predictable because you will get either a head or a tail, but never know which one since all events are individual and isolated, independent, and do not foreshadow in any real way what the next result might be. Sometimes we use the word “random” to refer to unpredicted outcomes such as rain shower on a sunny day or an unannounced visit from weird Aunt Hortensia who normally lives in Portland but just happens to be in Minnesota for the weekend for no apparent reason. Nevertheless, neither the rain nor the visit are random, being more a part of predictable chaotic patterns to which we may not be privy. They seem “random” but if we had more information, we would understand how they might be “strange,” but certainly not random. Teenagers love to abuse this word to describe events that seem tangential or extraneous to them, but then again, it’s because they don’t see a bigger picture. The idea of randomness has bothered me every since I read The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder (1927) which tells the story of a number of people who are killed when a bridge collapses. “On Friday noon, July the twentieth, 1714, the finest bridge in all Peru broke and precipitated five travelers into the gulf below,” but is any of it random? The people are relatively unrelated and their stories and lives are all incredibly different, but they all die together when the bridge collapses. The question that the novel proposes, I suppose, is the random nature in life’s events–is there a meaning to it all or is it all random? How was it that those five people were all on the bridge at the same time and that the bridge decided to fail at that moment. At the end of Conan Doyle’s “The Cardboard Box,” Holmes remarks, “What is the meaning of it, Watson?” […] “What object is served by this circle of misery and violence and fear? It must tend to some end, or else our universe is ruled by chance, which is unthinkable. But what end? There is the great standing perennial problem to which human reason is as far from an answer as ever.” So sometimes, life looks really, really, random, even when, perhaps, it’s not.

On randomness

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The nature of a random event is both complex and chaotic, but again, predictable in a certain way. When you flip a coin, the result is both random and predictable because you will get either a head or a tail, but never know which one since all events are individual and isolated, independent, and do not foreshadow in any real way what the next result might be. Sometimes we use the word “random” to refer to unpredicted outcomes such as rain shower on a sunny day or an unannounced visit from weird Aunt Hortensia who normally lives in Portland but just happens to be in Minnesota for the weekend for no apparent reason. Nevertheless, neither the rain nor the visit are random, being more a part of predictable chaotic patterns to which we may not be privy. They seem “random” but if we had more information, we would understand how they might be “strange,” but certainly not random. Teenagers love to abuse this word to describe events that seem tangential or extraneous to them, but then again, it’s because they don’t see a bigger picture. The idea of randomness has bothered me every since I read The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder (1927) which tells the story of a number of people who are killed when a bridge collapses. “On Friday noon, July the twentieth, 1714, the finest bridge in all Peru broke and precipitated five travelers into the gulf below,” but is any of it random? The people are relatively unrelated and their stories and lives are all incredibly different, but they all die together when the bridge collapses. The question that the novel proposes, I suppose, is the random nature in life’s events–is there a meaning to it all or is it all random? How was it that those five people were all on the bridge at the same time and that the bridge decided to fail at that moment. At the end of Conan Doyle’s “The Cardboard Box,” Holmes remarks, “What is the meaning of it, Watson?” […] “What object is served by this circle of misery and violence and fear? It must tend to some end, or else our universe is ruled by chance, which is unthinkable. But what end? There is the great standing perennial problem to which human reason is as far from an answer as ever.” So sometimes, life looks really, really, random, even when, perhaps, it’s not.

On endings

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Unlike beginnings, which are plenty scary by themselves, endings are often poignant and solitary. You drive off, you walk away from an airport, you get on a train or bus, you stroll down a street never to come back. A car door slams, you lock the door and turn away. It’s over. We have all been through our share of endings–a job, a school, a friendship, a life–so we all have our anecdotes about moving on, saying goodbye, and picking up the broken pieces so that we can start again. Endings make us wistful and nostalgic because we are not always sure that the new thing ahead of us is better than what is being left behind. We are plagued by our memories which torture us into remembering all of those great moments in the past when we were, at least for a moment, happy. The constant truth is that all things end, no matter how we feel about them. Change is, perhaps, the only constant in most of our lives. As a teacher, students come and students go, and that’s the way it’s always been. As an ex-pat in another country, my friends have come and gone many times, and now are scattered to the four corners of the world. It is hard to stay in touch, and even with different digital media sites, it is still difficult to maintain a real friendship from seven thousand miles away. And when old friends finally make their last trip, it is equally difficult to say goodbye, especially when you have known them for more than fifty years. Yet those fifty years are also a monument to that friendship which has had to endure a lot of stuff, not all good, much of it very good. Mortality is, in the end, about endings, and that is the way it must be–one of those rules nobody breaks.

On endings

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Unlike beginnings, which are plenty scary by themselves, endings are often poignant and solitary. You drive off, you walk away from an airport, you get on a train or bus, you stroll down a street never to come back. A car door slams, you lock the door and turn away. It’s over. We have all been through our share of endings–a job, a school, a friendship, a life–so we all have our anecdotes about moving on, saying goodbye, and picking up the broken pieces so that we can start again. Endings make us wistful and nostalgic because we are not always sure that the new thing ahead of us is better than what is being left behind. We are plagued by our memories which torture us into remembering all of those great moments in the past when we were, at least for a moment, happy. The constant truth is that all things end, no matter how we feel about them. Change is, perhaps, the only constant in most of our lives. As a teacher, students come and students go, and that’s the way it’s always been. As an ex-pat in another country, my friends have come and gone many times, and now are scattered to the four corners of the world. It is hard to stay in touch, and even with different digital media sites, it is still difficult to maintain a real friendship from seven thousand miles away. And when old friends finally make their last trip, it is equally difficult to say goodbye, especially when you have known them for more than fifty years. Yet those fifty years are also a monument to that friendship which has had to endure a lot of stuff, not all good, much of it very good. Mortality is, in the end, about endings, and that is the way it must be–one of those rules nobody breaks.

On being

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Sometimes just being seems so simple, but there other times when being seems paradoxically hard. I find that daily heat of summer in Texas to be both simple and complex: one really doesn’t need to do much more than drink water and stay in the shade in order to get by, but is there more to life than just getting by? The question that poets and philosophers have wrestled with since there have been poets and philosophers is both complex and simple, but it also might be irrelevant. Life often has the meaning that we are willing to give it. Most of the universe seems to be dedicated to the simplification of complex systems, of dissipating energy, of searching for equilibrium, all of which seems to run contrary to the hopes and dreams of most people, who are busy building castles in the air, planning for the future, stashing away a pile of nuts for winter, hoping that things will get better, all the while forgetting about the importance of being in the here and now. Perhaps being is more a state of mind than it is a physical action or a series of objects. As Voyager 1 drifts out of the Terran solar system, one wonders about both the expanse that makes up our universe and the loneliness of an ancient computer that continues to power the middle-aged satellite, which still listens to radio commands that take over seventeen hours to reach it. Sometime in the future, around 2024, its nuclear power will run out of fuel and the lights will go out, but it will continue to drift, quietly through the vast black vacuum of space. The satellites mission was simple, and its very existence unquestioned. It has no fear of its end, no consciousness or self-awareness to complicate its mission. People are not satellites, fairly unaware of their futures, completely clueless about whether anything they are doing is right or correct. We second guess or plans, misunderstand our motives, trapped by ambiguity, confused by chaos, blinded by prejudice, bias, and relativism. Yet, that is the paradox of being. The world is not simple or easy to understand. Multiple correct answers to simple questions make navigating life a much more complex proposition than just a simple walk through a park. Medieval writers often compared life to a pilgrim’s journey to some holy site. I think that this was just so much wishful thinking on their part while they tried to ignore the fragmented, chaotic, non-linear nature of daily life. We wish our lives could be a simple as Voyager 1, but we all know deep down in our hearts that our dreams and desires complicate our lives in ways which are too innumerable to list here. Happiness seems elusive, solitude clings to us like an errant shadow, and we often fail to live up to any of our own expectations. We have met the enemy and he is us, as Pogo once said. Yet the human heart has a stamina that often appears superhuman. Even in the most mind-boggling disasters and tragedy, people are often shown, tears on their faces, explaining how they are going to start over, rebuild, keep going, even when their dreams have been destroyed by a raging flood or catastrophic storm. Where does this capacity for optimism come from? When the simple act of being seems nigh on impossible, people pull themselves up by their bootstraps, and begin again. Seems simple enough.

On being

Posted on by

Sometimes just being seems so simple, but there other times when being seems paradoxically hard. I find that daily heat of summer in Texas to be both simple and complex: one really doesn’t need to do much more than drink water and stay in the shade in order to get by, but is there more to life than just getting by? The question that poets and philosophers have wrestled with since there have been poets and philosophers is both complex and simple, but it also might be irrelevant. Life often has the meaning that we are willing to give it. Most of the universe seems to be dedicated to the simplification of complex systems, of dissipating energy, of searching for equilibrium, all of which seems to run contrary to the hopes and dreams of most people, who are busy building castles in the air, planning for the future, stashing away a pile of nuts for winter, hoping that things will get better, all the while forgetting about the importance of being in the here and now. Perhaps being is more a state of mind than it is a physical action or a series of objects. As Voyager 1 drifts out of the Terran solar system, one wonders about both the expanse that makes up our universe and the loneliness of an ancient computer that continues to power the middle-aged satellite, which still listens to radio commands that take over seventeen hours to reach it. Sometime in the future, around 2024, its nuclear power will run out of fuel and the lights will go out, but it will continue to drift, quietly through the vast black vacuum of space. The satellites mission was simple, and its very existence unquestioned. It has no fear of its end, no consciousness or self-awareness to complicate its mission. People are not satellites, fairly unaware of their futures, completely clueless about whether anything they are doing is right or correct. We second guess or plans, misunderstand our motives, trapped by ambiguity, confused by chaos, blinded by prejudice, bias, and relativism. Yet, that is the paradox of being. The world is not simple or easy to understand. Multiple correct answers to simple questions make navigating life a much more complex proposition than just a simple walk through a park. Medieval writers often compared life to a pilgrim’s journey to some holy site. I think that this was just so much wishful thinking on their part while they tried to ignore the fragmented, chaotic, non-linear nature of daily life. We wish our lives could be a simple as Voyager 1, but we all know deep down in our hearts that our dreams and desires complicate our lives in ways which are too innumerable to list here. Happiness seems elusive, solitude clings to us like an errant shadow, and we often fail to live up to any of our own expectations. We have met the enemy and he is us, as Pogo once said. Yet the human heart has a stamina that often appears superhuman. Even in the most mind-boggling disasters and tragedy, people are often shown, tears on their faces, explaining how they are going to start over, rebuild, keep going, even when their dreams have been destroyed by a raging flood or catastrophic storm. Where does this capacity for optimism come from? When the simple act of being seems nigh on impossible, people pull themselves up by their bootstraps, and begin again. Seems simple enough.