Dear Diary,
Currently I’m rereading Jurassic Park for the 8th or 9th time… I know it’s a bit excessive but I truly love the book and find something new with every read. During my last read I came across a passage that stopped me in my tracks. And no, it wasn’t the part when Nedry feels his own intestines after getting slashed open by a Dilophosaurus. This time it was something Malcolm said while on one of his diatribes about chaos theory. He was talking about fractals, which states “things look almost identical at different scales.” This didn’t mean much to me until he started using the idea to examine our lives.
“A day is like a while life. You start out doing one thing, but end up doing something else, plan to run an errand, but never get there…. And at the end of your life, your whole existence has that same haphazard quality, too. Your whole life has the same shape as a single day.”
This idea really got me thinking and examining what a single day looks like in my life. My days are usually pretty well planned and turn out how I expected. But when looking at my life, so far things are not at all what I expected. I can’t quite figure out where I am in my life/day and I don’t think I will be able to until the sun has set on my last day.
While I haven’t quite figured out how my entire life will look I have been able to take a step back and examine a few other patterns in my life.
I like to move around. I’ve always considered myself someone who likes to nest, but at the same time the thought of staying somewhere for 4+ years has always made me uneasy. As I think back to my stints in different cities, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York, there is a definite pattern that emerges. It starts out with me loving the city, but a little lonely. Then I get a job, create an amazing group of friends, and start to build a real life. Then things get hard and I grow restless. Then one day, while looking in the mirror, I get a zany idea that I should pick up and move. I push the idea back but it doesn’t leave, and eventually materializes. Then I move.
This has happened 3 times. I’m just now finishing my first year of living in Seattle. I’m at the stage where my life is beginning to form. I have a few close friends and a job that I love and I really want to build a life here for more that just a few years. It scares me to think of picking up and moving somewhere else in 3 or 4 years. Yet my gut is telling me to hurry up and get Nationally Certified so that I can teach anywhere, just in case the wanderlust returns.
I truly don’t want to build a new life again, but I feel it is inevitable… or is it.
This is where Malcolm’s coveted chaos theory comes into play.
“Life is actually a series of encounter in which one event may change those that follow in a wholly unpredictable, even devastating way.”
While my life does seem to be following a distinct pattern, Malcolm says that something unpredictable will happen and obliterate the pattern. Perhaps my chaotic event will be something that forces me to settle down and make me stay for a decade or two. Or perhaps the big chaotic event will be that I simply never look in the mirror and get the zany idea to move.
Then again, should I really be examining my life based on theories put forward in pop-fiction novel?
Hugs and Kisses Till Next Time!!!
Dear Diary 