Friday, January 21, 2011

Trajectories & Random Walks (and other anecdotes and ideas)

I moved to Jackson to ski.  There are other factors, but Jackson had been on my mind for years, since traveling here as a teenager.  What keeps me here is the skiing.  Where does all this skiing lead me, I ask?  To something, surely.  The development of a philosophy, a wife, a career, there are many paths.  It may lead me some day to some far off place, in a distant, uninhabited land, and it might lead me to the cellars and offices of cities.  As someone once advised me, in the words of George Carlin, "Always do whatever's next!"

I once read in Philip Ball's book Critical Mass something about how gas particles do "random walks," random squiggly trajectories as opposed to linear trajectories.  The book focuses on the physics of society.  It got me thinking, we, as people, make decisions and embark on unique trajectories, which can have both physical and intangible qualities.  We live with the moment and use our awareness of elements of our moment to make choices.  Prior decisions, made by oneself or others, and in-motion trajectories dominate our landscape, but multi-dimensionality allows for the ability to create and change trajectories.  Subjects such as free will, fate, and metaphysics might provide a good framework for looking at these ideas.  Either way, in attempting to define my living in Jackson, skiing, I once cited this - I don't know how apt it is, but the principle I was getting after was that this was one step I was taking in a random walk.  I will walk in other shoes in other times.  But that is then, this is now. 

Time windows define our modern existence.  For everything, a time and a place.  But, on a larger scale, we experience time windows that span months, years, decades.  In geopolitics, there are theories delineating societal change in chunks of twenty five years.  In searching for one of these theories on Google, I ran across another interesting time subject - 2012.  I don't know much about the 2012 theories, but would like to explore it further in the future.  How time windows function interests me, and how we either make the window or miss it.  Is it really possible to experience the same set of circumstances, or opportunities twice?  Life can seem monotonous, but is everything ever the same?

Perhaps living here, skiing will teach me something, lead me somewhere, or introduce me to someone where I see how I can create the best trajectory, for me.  I don't like to think that I am procrastinating, but rather living a dream, doing something I love.  I am taking a random walk, but also going somewhere.  Things are changing all the time, and so can I, so it's all right. 

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