My life is great. Seriously. I enjoy a life that I couldn't have imagined when I was young.
As a boy growing up without a father, in a trailer park in a small town, I just couldn't imagine my future. How could I? What point of reference could I have? I could never have imagined that the amount of effort put in by my family -- including all the aunts and uncles -- would have opened my eyes to moving to a big city, getting an education, and a good life.
I remember cleaning other people's floors as a child, something that may shock others, but helped formulate me as a person. You see, it taught me the value of work, and the value of thinking for a living rather than doing manual labor. And we were saving up to travel. How could I know then that seeing the world would open my eyes to the possibilities and potentialities outside our little rural oil patch town?
Who could've thought that mom would marry and the family would move to a bustling metropolis and that I would go to school. I remember being fascinated by technology as a child; now I make a living doing what I could've only dreamed of back then. And a good living too. Seriously, I make more than I ever dreamed, more than I ever thought possible. This doesn't mean much in and of itself, but it sure opens up possibilities for my family.
I couldn't have thought then, nor after my first failed marriage, that I could ever be this happy or have this family. Never in a million years would I have imagined having three kids or such an amazing partner. Who knows what life will bring? Am I just incredibly lucky?
This leads me back to the idea of "stochastic resonance." This is the idea that injecting specific kinds of noise into an ordered system will help generate desired results. Like how slightly mis tuning an AM radio sometimes results in richer sound. Imagine a pool table with one ball close to one of the pockets. The pool table is covered and you want to find out what pocket the ball is close to. How do you do it? Jiggle the table. Chances are, if you align things in the general direction you want to go, randomness over time will line up just right to achieve your goal. Maybe even in ways you couldn't have imagined.
So I think a powerful metaphor for life could be stochastic resonance. You can carefully set stuff up as best you can but life always makes other plans. You can try to act against this random noise or use it. I've been very lucky to have just the right kind of noise in my life.
