Around the next bend

Sometimes the world seems big, expansive, overwhelming. Sometimes it feels too small for comfort, too familiar. The one thing it never is, is boring. Whether you look closely to discover something you never noticed before, or pan back to take in a sweeping vista, there is always something new.

But that new thing is easy to miss in the details of everyday living. We have to be here at 8, there at 2, practice at 4, meetings at 7, bedtime. Repeat. That might be what many days look like, but it is not what we will remember twenty years down the road. What we will think back on and smile about are the tines when we were NOT following the routine. Our view of the world is shaped by those times when we open our eyes to something new.

I’m not naïve. I do realize that my children will eventually come to humor my attempts to expose them to the variety of the world. Perhaps they will do so with a knowing smile. Or maybe they will go kicking and screaming. Maybe they will opt out when they are old enough to know what that means. However I have the grand vision of family togetherness playing on repeat in my head. Reality be damned. I will try to broaden a few horizons or at least plant the seeds of appreciation for being outside of your own head, in the world, in the moment.

So, in an effort to do this, we bought a vehicle made for exploring and christened it, UTFRSKA. To be fair, it was time for a new car so the exploring part was not our only motivating factor. However the Swedish pedigree of the car did influence the license plate and now we are ready to hit the road for adventures big and small.

Utforska = Explore. We did verify this first with an online translator, then with a couple of real live Swedes. Hopefully they weren’t just being nice because we already ordered the license plate.

Irrational numbers

Just when I think the directions are clear and I know where I should be going, I feel lost. This can be said of my writing these days as well as in life. It all makes so much sense from the big picture view. Yet when you get into the details and try to figure out how they might possibly fit together, it all gets fuzzy. The more you know, the less you know. You know?

In the first semester of my sophomore year in college I took Physics 212. Until then I thought I knew math. Two weeks into that course I realized I knew nothing. We worked with integrals that only approached a limit, but never actually got to their end destination. Instead of equaling an actual number, they just got smaller and smaller forever but the sum of the rapidly diminishing solutions was only an approximation. It was deeply unsatisfying. How can a solution not actually be the real answer and how could that possibly be useful? I had to just accept the concept and move on even though I did not understand the underlying theory. I still don’t.

What I should have realized then is that math is always the simplest way to say anything. What better description for the way life really works could there possibly be? We can see the answer, the end goal, the gate to Nirvana, but we can never actually get there. And the closer we get, the farther the journey seems. Just trying losing that last five pounds of baby weight and you will understand what I mean.

Part of the joy in historical research is getting lost in the detail. Each piece of information leads to another idea, another fact that leads to another, and another, like an endless trail of breadcrumbs. Each individual element is interesting, titillating in its own way and feels like a treasure, but it is so easy to amass a great pile of facts and forget the actual reason for researching. Giving into the search and losing one’s bearings, just a little, is when the best material comes to light. That is why it is so hard, and a bit disappointing to get back on track and take the big picture view. Sure it makes more sense, but it lacks adventure.

So right now I am awash in dates and details, character flaws and chapters with no ending. I am more lost than I care to be. I cannot seem to step back far enough for a bit of clarity. A good part of me wants to move on, pick a new subject and be a bit reckless. The rest of me is hoping that, like Physics 212, I can trudge my way through the diminishing returns and reach a point where I can approximate a solution.

At the end of that semester I was no longer thought I knew a thing about math, but I did understand more fully what I was capable of doing. Even now that C that I earned is one of my prouder moments. I hope at some point I can look back at this period in my life and say it too was one of my better endeavors.