Life is sequential, not cyclical as I’d earlier believed. Perhaps as we grow we learn an expanding set of basis functions to describe what we perceive, the more we see the larger the basis function set becomes. Life isn’t a signal either, that can be decomposed into high and low frequencies, where the low frequencies are responsible for most of the energy. It’s not recorded on a tape. The basis function idea is closer to the truth. It’s almost a describable procedure- our initial attempt to explain new data is to use our existing basis function; if this is not possible we are forced to admit a new element into our basis function. At times we also reorganize our basis, keeping the cardinality the same but converting it into a more canonical one.
Life also isn’t simply composed of short and long sentences, where the length signifies the quality of it all. It is not describable as thus. It is not countable even. It is not preconditioned on factors known only to ourselves. It’s skeleton is not simply the one inside our body. The emotions we ascribe to it aren’t received by it at all. We are writing odes to a personified idea, that is not manifest in any shape or form. We are so far off the mark that there could hardly be a worse stance than this.
Our cognitive faults may never be repaired, so perhaps we are meant to cover them up rather than eliminate them. They are meant to be fossilized rather than exhumed by flame. Our greatest desires may never really be fulfilled, but does that prevent us from knowing them, from dreaming them? Our lives may never converge to inertia, to a known optima or result, and they might not even establish a new baseline. They might not fit into any of the moulds out there. Really, they might not matter to anyone at all, in all their fulness and scope. Their won’t be a grand canyon like exhibit, with all the layers of our lives visible in sharp contrast, and signboards indicating each layer’s and unique feature’s story.
We shall probably not converge to the goals we stated in the beginning, because they shall not remain the same, and they shall not even mean the same thing. So it’s about time, that we stop acting so wise and prophet like. The first birth we saw was ours and the last funeral we see will be ours too. So be it.
