I started this blog simply to have a record of my random thoughts. I had no particular goal except to organize and sort my musings, fact-check my preconceived beliefs, and hopefully become more enlightened. The learning is happening as each blog entangles others.
Like strings in a box that become knotted with small agitations (we've all been there), the random nature of my musings becomes more tangled the more I write. Looking back at the post that precedes this one (What makes it ... IT), there are tentacles reaching into earlier posts that reach into other posts forming an increasingly complex knot. My discussion of essence is deliberately tied to "A Conversation". It happened to tie to "A Lifelong Attitude Adjustment". Eventually, I expect the entire blog will, without deliberation, become a tangled tapestry that weaves every musing into an abstract mural that has yet to take form. Why?
At the University of California, San Diego, Dorian Reymer and Douglas Smith showed that agitated strings in a box had a probability of knotting that increased sharply with long agitation time, long length and higher flexibility. They approached the problem scientifically and mathematically. They agitated strings of various lengths and flexibility by tumbling them in boxes of different sizes. The project explained why "strings" (necklaces, electrical cords, ropes, etc.) seemed to spontaneously tangle. Indeed, it took very little agitation to knot the strings. Interestingly, a knot always began at one end and became more complicated with more agitation. Once a knot began to form at one end, it was rare that a knot would form at the other end.
I expect that the longer is my blog and the more flexible are my topics, the more entangled the posts will become, like knots in a string. It makes me wonder if all the stuff I have in my memory is a string, if my head is a box, and mental agitation is me messing with the string. I just hope as I age my individual musings add up to an accurate portrait of who I hope to be.
It was the post about Deidre drawing my attention to the essence of things that was the end of the string that relates directly to the knot in my blog. If I were more clever, I probably could find a level of abstraction that mathematically relates agitated strings to all my future blog posts.
I intend to devote a future post to the concept of abstraction. And, of course, that will further agitate the string. In a few years, I will look back and see the evolving whole that will say a lot about me --I hope I like it.