Today marks my 21st year here. So far, so good.
Here are my current reflections about the little I’ve seen of this place.
They will change by this time next year.
The world is beautiful.
The bright turquoise water in the British Virgin Islands, the azaleas that line my neighborhood in spring, the sheer height of mountains out West, the expansiveness of Lake Michigan, the dog park on a sunny day, the light hues of clouds through an airplane window, the bright white cliffs of Dover, the orange leaves of trees in a North Carolina autumn, soft zoysia lawn grass, lavender, bright red sunsets, lakes, oceans, mountains, rain, rose bushes, oak trees, clovers, dragonflies, snowflakes, puddles, rainbows, stars, birds, the color of blue porcelain, sapphires, and the hill in my backyard. That’s all very beautiful.
But it’s not at all what I mean when I say the world is beautiful. I mean the patterns of this place.
Maybe it is because I use the same few equations over and over again in physics or maybe it’s because I am currently reading a section covering Principia Mathematica of ‘I am a Strange Loop’ by Douglas Hofstadter, but the sheer number of patterns that exist in this world is beautiful.
In other words, the world is organized. I will admit, much of my view about the beauty of patterns in nature is Hofstader’s, simply because I am not a math major and have not devoted the amount of time to pattern-studying as he has. While I have not finished reading the book, I am already beginning to buy into his worldview that everything is connected via loops and patterns: math, art, music, etc. One of the specific patterns that resonated with me was the Fibonacci sequence—specifically, the fact that mathematicians proved that out of all the infinite numbers of the Fibonacci sequence, the only two perfect powers are 8 and 144. There will be no other squares, cubes, etc. for the entirety of the infinite sequence. To me, the fact that mathematics can tell us this only using symbols and logic and still remain consistent with the Fibonacci sequence that shows up in nature is simply, beautiful.
In sum, the world is extremely organized and the patterns and loops that show up everywhere just tickle my brain : )
The world is quite miserable, too.
Although it is very well organized and very beautiful, we have to acknowledge the very real elephant in the room: suffering. Everyone does it, everyone goes through it. It's there and its real. I think there are people are genuinely evil and I think there are life events that are genuinely evil. None of that takes away from the beauty of life that nevertheless persist, it just means we have to intentionally remind ourselves to search for beautiful things and point them out when we find them.
In sum: Life is beautiful, but it is miserable too.
Aristotle points out this relationship concisely in one of my favorite quotes of all times:
And we all see that men cling to life even at the cost of enduring great misfortune, seeming to find in life a natural sweetness and happiness. (politics, VI)
Therefore, even though there is some very real suffering, let us cling to life on the supposition that the beauty will prevail.
That's my quick tidbit on what I think about this place so far. So far, so good. : )
With much love,
Arden
may we continue to cling onto the positive