Apparently, my brother has been skipping all my nerdy posts lately because they’re too boring for his standards. And because I no longer want to entertain the art of “what works” by society’s standards or chase engagement, I’ll just keep posting all the nerdy things I’ve been collecting and thinking about all these years; the ones I used to feel too uncool to share.
I’ll just be myself and be boring; because, let’s be honest, I am as boring as what you see here. But this is now my playground, a place where I can write about whatever topics I want and fully embrace my nerdiness. I’m going to dissect my train of thought.
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Today, I'm going to talk about the Galton board.
The Galton board is basically a vertical board with rows of pegs. You drop a bunch of tiny balls from the top, they bounce left or right as they hit each peg, and eventually they land in slots at the bottom forming a perfect bell curve; the normal distribution.
Even though every single ball's path is random, the choice is binary: either 0 or 1, left or right. Yet the overall pattern is still predictable each time. It is like a predictable chaos.
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The metaphor in life:
You’re one of those little balls, bouncing between the pegs of circumstance; by luck, upbringing, choices, people, accidents, heartbreaks, opportunities. Each peg shifts your direction slightly left or right. You can’t control all the pegs, but over time, you still end up forming part of a bigger pattern. Most of the time, you are as normal as everyone else in this world.
BUT, some people end up on the far ends (the outliers), not because they are different or special, but because that’s just how probability works. Usually the super successful people or geniuses or dirty rich people, they are the odd ones in the system. The system itself tends toward balance, and this illusion of randomness produces order. I say 'illusion' because even though it seems random, there is hidden order behind it, there's mathematical equation to support every result.
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What I want to say is, I know, life seems so hard. I can see it in the people around me, I can see the struggle, the pain, the confusion, the frustration. The whole ordeal of being alive. I'm not going to say that it is ok, or romanticize the struggle. It's just maybe, it is ok to just let yourself trust the math of life. That even when it feels chaotic, you’re still part of a pattern too large for you to see yet. You’re still falling toward form.
Every time you hit something hard, you’re absorbing a lesson, even if you don’t feel it yet, it is shaping you. And the good thing is, you are not alone, we are balancing the order together. This is not a cue for you to give up, it is a small reminder for you to feel slightly better about your wars.
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Ok, questions for you (or maybe just ME):
- How can we transform randomness into meaning? - I think by being aware of it, taking note of every instance in your life and learning from it. Being conscious and deliberate can change your views and perception, maybe you can't change your story, but you can change your narrative. At least if you a stuck in a phase, instead of being hopeless and in pain about it, you can be ridiculously at peace, hahah. I don't like the idea of being at peace with everything though, it feels like it takes the human flavour out of it, so play by your own stance lah.
- If our lives follow a pattern like the Galton board, do we really have free will? I think we do, technically, you can still rewrite stories with effort and d'oa kan. Yes, there are certain things that are maktub; the fixed destiny; when and how you die, your jodoh, the major test/blessings that define your life; those are the core and you can't dodge them. But there's also conditional destiny; the part that response to your choices, effort and d'oa. That's the beautiful part about it; it’s both divine orchestration and our participation.
- What would happen if you refused to fall? Is it possible? In physics, refusing to fall means defying gravity, an act that demands immense energy. But for what purpose? Not making any decision is still a decision, no response is also a form of response. It is not freedom, that's stasis, you are stuck, and that is its own kind of suffering, kan. How will you grow? Growth only happens in motion and motion requires falling.
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