856. Rando’s

We like to think of the universe as having some type of sense? Some order? What is life if not meaningful? Isn’t there some greater person, some deity, some energy, that’s guiding this? Isn’t there some way that we can make sense of the way things happen in the world? Didn’t God very intentionally create the world and take seven days doing so? Didn’t he sit down and make a list, Monday, I’ll do this, Tuesday, this… and freak, Sunday, I’ll be pretty freaking worn out, might as well take a day time nap or day drink…NetFlix and Chill? Anything other than create more shit. That shit is tiring after all.

Rando’s??? You may very well ask yourself, what the F does that mean? Random’s. If I was halfway cool, this is how I would imagine I’d refer to random people and random things that come into our lives, Rando’s. Sure maybe someone out there someone would be fooled into actually thinking I was halfway as cool now as I thought I was at age 15…surely, they are out there? But that ain’t so & trying to sound cool by saying Rando’s is really too much effort isn’t it? Coolness after all, extremely overrated. So let’s make some sense out of this random way of communication, shall we?

Sure we’ve been taught to avoid Strangers, anyone who is not known, could be dangerous. Which is of course is great advice for a first grader who might not have developed the discernment yet to know that a man in a white van parked by the playground with darkened or no windows in the back might not really just only be wanting to give you some Laffy Taffy. Wished someone would have told me this a few years back. I mean not when I was living in Grapevine, just in my 40’s. Funny, right?

Okay, let’s try to reign in all this intentional randomness and rando’s. Here’s the point, leave yourself open to randomness. We as humans are prone to try to make sense of our world, to bring the chaos together, to say each and every thing that happens has meaning, has intention. There’s chaos theory which says that, ” Chaos theory is an interdisciplinary theory stating that, within the apparent randomness of chaotic complex systems, there are underlying patterns, interconnectedness, constant feedback loops, repetition, self-similarity, fractals, and self-organization. The butterfly effect, an underlying principle of chaos, describes how a small change in one state of a deterministic nonlinear system can result in large differences in a later state (meaning that there is sensitive dependence on initial conditions).A metaphor for this behavior is that a butterfly flapping its wings in China can cause a hurricane in Texas.” Fancy talk eh?

That’s funny a whole theory that is called Chaos Theory that basically says that among all this chaotic universe there are patterns. That’s just funny because the bottom line of chaos theory is that it makes sense, there are patterns, it’s organized. When are we going to give that up? When are we going to stare up into a night sky and realize the immense-ness of the universe and realize that there’s not a guiding hand and regardless of our need to make sense of it all….well sometimes shit just happens. Sometimes it’s just chaos, and not much else.

What does Taylor Swift have to do with Rando’s? Absolutely nothing. It’s random. It’s chaos. Random chaos. Anything can happen here. But let’s bring it back home shall we?

This morning I hit the trails on a tip from a fellow Dirty Soles member, Barb Nary’s Rando posting on the Face of the Books. So 6am and a few other Rando’s and we headed up the mountain. And let’s talk about Chaos Theory because the two themes of the morning were Pink Floyd and Texas (and consequently Oklahoma)…. so on a 10 mile run/hike with my bud Barb and before this morning two folks that were rando’s to me… and along the trail we see 2 people with Pink Floyd shirts on…and then 4 people with Oklahoma-Texas connections. So rando? Chaos theory? Are there patterns here?

Well what have we accomplished here with all this random talk? Probably a whole bunch of nothing but there’s this. In the past two weeks, I randomly decide in the morning what to do with the dogs and to get Cardio in. So I go to a park, on another day to a trail system, and then today to a trail way up in the mountains. In that time, I have ran into the same person and that person is from Pearland, Texas and she went to A&M (as also in Texas.) I am from Texas as well/ She has two Golden Retrievers, I have two Golden Retrievers. She is married to a dude from the Garden State. I am married to a chick who’s Mother has always had a Garden…. and love Bruce Springsteen who is also from the Garden State. Chaos. Rando? Randomness? Man it doesn’t seem so. But things like that happen and we attribute it to some guiding hand of fate. Or is it just completely rando?

These kind of thoughts I think, are at least a good thing. The thought that there is meaning to all this. Questioning lives patterns, it’s cycles. Deep thoughts. Jack Handy. But a half century into it here and I’m thinking it may just be best to realize we are a mere speck and not the center of the universe. Sometimes there’s meaning in randomness and letting go.