a pebble falling into a pool of stillness produces rings that spread throughout the entire pool. a butterfly fluttering its wings here can produce a typhoon far away.
do you suppose that equilibrium really is the steady state of the universe?
that for every action there's an equal and opposite reaction, bringing everything back into balance?
for every good thing that happens, is something bad required?
is existence itself is a zero-sum game? it would explain much...but what would it mean?
around here it means when you finally pay off a car loan, the transmission of said car falls apart.
and every time you update your kitchen, the electrician makes a mess of your new kitchen floor. and the refrigerator door. and the pantry. and the basement.
finally getting your finances in order? unemployment will make a shambles of that.
is one child seeing the light at school, reversing a long indifference to academics? not to worry, the other one (the one identified as "academically gifted") will cheerfully raise the red flag of "not adequate progress."
are you seeing the not-so-subtle trend here? the pendulum swings one way, then it swings the other. the universe sees you surfing ahead of the wave, arches a cosmic eyebrow, gives you a small, not-unkind smile, and suddenly you're eating sand and picking seaweed out of your ears.
it's not personal, probably. it's not that the universe is conspiring against anyone in particular. it's just karma keeping things real.
for every yin there's a yang. for every zig there's a zag. for every bit of matter there's a bit of antimatter busily canceling it out.
if you can see the harmony in these relationships, and can appreciate their elegant dance, it might be easier to accept the little ups and downs life throws at you. in fact, if you were really, really smart, you might even be able to develop an algorithm that successfully predicts such events ahead of time.
if you had at your disposal the fastest, most powerful computer ever conceived, along with a program capable of reconciling an infinite number of variables and an infinite number of permutations, well...you could be very popular in vegas.
actually, you could be god.
and as god, you could tell people, hey! guess what? you can't say you're "pro-life" and then deprive the living of healthcare. you can't say you're christ-like and then molest the most vulnerable members of your flock. you can't enable consumption of more fossil fuels and creation of more greenhouse gasses and call yourself an environmentalist.
well, you can, but there will be consequences you don't foresee or intend. and it's quite possible you won't like them. i'm just sayin' is all...
people would ignore you, of course. they have little patience for a god that doesn't worship the free market. this may contribute to ongoing imbalance in their steady state. or some cognitive dissonance, at the very least.
there's no telling what it would take to bring these folks back into cosmic symmetry. we'll stipulate that it wouldn't include denying care to sick children, or spending some quality time in an l.a. bondage club.
it's possible the entire purpose of their existence is to serve as a bad example, to be counteracted by folks with the opposite aesthetic.
equipoise. on balance, it's an interesting theory.
* * * * *
update: for every ruined transmission, there's and equal and opposite auto repair. today, out of the blue, the missus noted a direct deposit into our checking account. it was a bonus from her former company, promised prior to her departure but not delivered. the amount was slightly more than the cost to fix the transmission.
unexpected...apparently we need to update our algorithm.
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