string theory

"Underneath this smile lies everything
All my hopes, anger, pride and shame
Make myself a pact, not to shut doors on the past
Just for today... I am free"
[Pearl Jam, "Inside Job"]
 
A month overdue, with all apologies to the faithful who remember well enough to check.

It came and went, as it often does, quietly and without incident, a day like any other.  I did, as I have for 15 years, take some time for reflection.  I thought about the past, the present, and the future, about how inextricably linked they are and about the paradoxically fallacious nature of truth.

The best physicists in the world puzzle over a grand unifying theory that can bring together all the theoretical truths about the nature of the universe into one logical model.  They ultimately fail, of course, but in the grandest possible way, and I imagine they provide themselves endless wonderful hours of intellectual masturbation in the process.  Amidst it all there are some interesting ideas - the details of which I don't begin to profess to understand - and one such idea of which I once read was a notion that whenever any particle in the universe, however small, comes into contact with another particle, it leaves an indelible mark, a signature of sorts, which is also then passed on should it contact another.  Since, in the incredible expanse of time, every particle has at some point come into contact with another, and so on, ultimately, they'll all a part of one very large mass marriage, and so are we.

Or, put another way, a long time ago some sort of big bang may or may not have happened, and as a result nowadays everything may or may not be related, but even if we don't ever know the truth, it seems things keep on working anyway.

A long time before I was born something may or may not have happened.  To the end of my days, I can never and will never know with any more certainty than I do today if it actually occurred.  If it occurred, it may have been one of possibly few or possibly many (or possibly not at all) things that molded the history and formation of the family to which I was born, and the nature of the people and the environment by and in which I was raised.  Which in turn, of course, affected the outcome of who I am in the present time.  And who I am today will, of course, impact who Olivia grows up to be.  And should she choose to have or to raise children... And so on.  And so on.  I think that thing did happen, and I think it was perhaps the most impactful event in a young life, and I think it does in many ways form a linchpin that brings together so many disparate pieces of the past into one "grand unifying theory".  But since it's something about which I prefer not to speak and on which I prefer not to dwell, I'll save my intellectual masturbatory efforts for something else, and simply accept it as... "truth".

But just as the black and white dots of the Taiji represent the seeds of yin and yang amidst one another, from tragedy springs hope.

So what does this all mean?

That generations ago, the (possible) wrongs committed by people I've never met - let alone Olivia herself - formed a ripple in a pond that now sees me wanting to be the best possible guide I can for her.  She will choose her own destiny, just as I do mine, but somehow touched as I have been by events that transpired long before I was born, and, as much as I am able, in a positive way.
 
And she'll never know "the truth", just as I don't.  Neither will the best physicists of our time.  But none of that matters, because even if we shut the doors on the past, the marks have been made, the particles touched as it were, and what will be, will be, and all that remains:

The freedom to choose who we are.

And now, for me, that includes choosing to be the best archer I can.

"How I choose to feel... is how I am
How I choose to feel... is how I am
I will not lose my faith
It's an inside job today"
[Pearl Jam, "Inside Job"]