Life, Love, & Other Vague Generalities

Well hello there, people of the interwebs! I’m pretty new to blogging, but figured I’d give it a shot, as that’s what writers and artists and students and thinkers in general seem to be doing these days. I figure a topic such as the one listed above is a pretty safe place to start. So, here we go! What I’ve learned in my brief 22 years which makes me a veritable sage, how having a broken heart has made me into a better person, how writing is therapeutic and I’ve discovered meaning in my life because of it, why family is really the most important thing you can possibly have, why everyone should do ballet and yoga and learn an instrument at some point in their life, why dressing to impress is important, how to be an independent woman without bending to the will of the patriarchal society, why Stravinsky is better than Mozart. The end. I’m done. Wasn’t that fun? Aren’t I smart and insightful? I thought so. So I wrote a blog about it.

Those are the things people write about in blogs, correct? Those are the things people write about over and over in blogs, columns, forums, magazines, newspapers, books, and bathroom stalls. So I guess the question is, why? Why, when we are flooded with an abundance of stories about the same topics, do we keep producing them?

I think I may have part of an answer.

THE HUMAN EXPERIENCE

It’s what they tell you in every single writing class – write about the human experience. What the flibbertigibbet is the human experience though, anyway? Well, that question may be the point. We make so many generalizations about this mysterious thing called the human experience, but we all know full well that no two humans are exactly alike. Therefore, no two “human experiences” are going to be exactly alike. No matter how many advice columns you read, no matter how many stories you find of people overcoming the impossible, no matter how much you can relate to anyone’s personal life, things are not going to work out the same for you.

There are infinite factors that have made you into the person you are today and are going to make you into the person you’ll be tomorrow, the next day, twenty years from now, all the way up until your death. Infinite factors. For ONE PERSON. There are over 6 billion of us. If you’ve ever studied the principle of derangements in math, you’ll realize the magnitude of possibilities for completely different outcomes that creates. A derangement of ordered objects is a permutation in which none of the objects appear in their natural ordered place. For example, if you have a line of say, 4 people and you want to see how many different ways you can arrange those 4 people in that line, you use a simple formula to find the number of possible derangements. Now, I know what you’re thinking, Math?! I hate math! Why is she using math? I don’t want to do math – that’s why I’m reading! I know. I hate math too. Just stay with me for a minute here. So, the formula goes, n!/e (n being the number of objects, ! being “factorial” i.e. the number multiplied by each preceding digit to 1, and e being the irrational number 2.718…blah blah blah forever just because it is.) Going back to our 4 lovely people, you just multiply n, which is 4, by its factorial (4x3x2x1), you get 24. Divide that by 2.718 and you get 8.83. Round that up to the nearest whole number and you get 9. There are 9 possible ways you can arrange four people in a line. Want to see without the silly maths? Ok. Say our friends are named A, B, C, and D. Aside from the first ABCD, the only possible ways you can arrange them are: 1-BADC, 2-BCDA, 3-BDAC, 4-CADB, 5-CDAB, 6-CDBA, 7-DABC, 8-DCAB, 9-DCBA.

Pretty easy to see the principle with a small number. Now, say we had a line with 16 people in it. See, the funny thing about factorials is that they get really huge, really fast. If we try to do this equation, 16 factorial (16x15x14x13x12x11x10x9x8x7x6x5x4x3x2)…it gets pretty freaking huge.

What I’m trying to get at is, if we’re looking at that many different possible outcomes just for a few people standing in a line, life is absolutely unfathomably complicated.

The human experience. Somehow, we keep coming back to it. If there are all these infinite possibilities and all these forces working on every single person and we know that no two people are going to be the same, why is it that we are so often drawn to these very similar generalities?

For one thing, life isn’t math. (Thank GOD!!!!) People have a lot more in common with each other than math principles and probability would have us believe. It is true that nobody’s experience is going to be exactly the same, but that’s beautiful isn’t it? Everyone sees things a little, or a lot differently, and sharing that is how we discover more and more of this crazy, confusing, terrifying, wonderful world we live in. It doesn’t matter if someone has talked about it before. Everyone has their own completely unique perspective. And, really, it’s satisfying to read things that seem to line up with your own thoughts and experiences. That’s why we keep doing it. Even if the circumstances surrounding the idea are completely different, there are certain things that a whole lot of humans know at some level. We all know love, loss, bonding, faith, hope, longing, struggle, failure, and triumph. Our own personal experiences with them will be unique to us, but the human experience is the broader principles at work. And the more we share them, the more we connect with each other on this fundamental level, the more our own experiences are enhanced.

C.S. Lewis. I love this man. He said, “Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence about how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.”

So, I’m starting a blog. Sure, I’m going to touch on a lot of topics others have delved much deeper into. But that’s okay. I’m me, and this is what I think and feel. You can choose to read it or not read it. You can relate to it or be completely confused, offended, or bored by it. That’s up to you, and what I write is up to me. Here’s my experience, and my hope is that by recording and sharing it, we can all get at least a little something out of it.