The Randomness of Life

 

For the longest time, I can take pride that I evolved through the years parallel to PLANNING and PLANNING.  Anything RANDOM was farthest from my mind, if at all.  YET, my realization like NOT so long ago, six years ago to be precise, is that we should be living life as it is, inclusive of everything that's RANDOM because contrary to our misconceptions, life is more RANDOM than planned, regardless your being a planner📗📙📘

Please DON'T get me wrong as I am NOT contradicting myself because all along, I always preach for PLANNING and PLANNING no less.  BUT let me qualify things here.  PLANNING is NOT inclusive.  Once you step out of your home and regardless WHETHER you will drive OR you're commuting, almost everything right outside your doorstep becomes random.  True, you planned to leave home way past the traffic peak hours OR you purposely waited for that heavy downpour to weaken BUT the bottom line here is that WHILE we are taught and reared to PLAN and PLAN, more importantly, handling and managing the random things in life would matter as much as PLANNING💥💥💥

NOT too long ago, I plotted my plans in that typical 'WBS' [Work Breakdown Structure] discipline with inter-dependencies and critical paths identified up front.  YET, along the way, I realized that I just CAN'T cover the whole nine yards because rather than striving for a thorough and perfect order of things, UNCERTAINTY creeps and that's WHEN we will realize those things in life WHICH are way beyond our control.  BUT so as NOT to scare you, WHILE we will bluntly preach that we need to embrace UNCERTAINTY, let's coaxed things in a subtle way by articulating that we need to embrace change, and letting go of any UNCERTAINTY that comes our way❎❎❎

WHICH means, once we can focus our personal actions MORE on the 'CONTROLLABLES', we can then navigate WHATEVER unexpected that surfaces and along the way, build up that resilience in the face of the 'insurmountable', if any.   And once we become more humble, less competitive [without being laidback and lazy] and more compassionate [without neglecting ourselves either], researches showed that we can likely find our 'happiness levels' and life quality can even steeply improve😊😊😊

Our takeaway:  Frankly, our brain abhors RANDOMNESS and instead it seeks patterns and craves control BUT RANDOM processes are fundamental in nature and are ubiquitous even in our everyday lives [YET most people seem NOT to understand them OR think much about them.  If you heard about that spine-tingling narrative of United Airlines flight attendant Elise O'Kane WHO was supposed to be in that ill-fated Flight UA 175 which rammed through the World Trade Center's North Tower BUT due to their computer system's glitch, she was WRONGLY assigned to another flight.  After retiring from UA, she trained to be a nurse because she admitted she wanted to 'GIVE BACK AND FULFILL' herself in life.  Just another testament of life's RANDOMNESS🙏🙏🙏

The Randomness Of Life

The Randomness Of Life

I DON'T intend to resurface that dreaded 9/11 attacks that caused almost 3,000 deaths [to be precise, 2,977 victims + the 19 hijackers].  Enough of that though.  Instead, the 9/11 memory brings me back that story about Elise O'Kane, the United Airlines flight attendant whose life got saved all because of The Randomness Of Life💴💷💵

That time, Elise O'Kane wanted her usual flight from Boston to Los Angeles on 09.11.2001.  BUT when she logged into their system, she keyed in an incorrect code into the airline's computer system and ended up assigned to the wrong flight [instead of Flight UA 175].  Then Elize O'Kane tried other attempts to talk it out with other flight attendants to get assigned to Flight UA 175.  All those became efforts in futility NOT until the hijackers struck Flight UA 175 right to the World Trade Center's South Tower.  That typo error saved the life of Elize O'Kane, THANK YOU LORD📗📙📘

Fast forward today, Elize O'Kane, after taking the time to consider what such a meaningful PLAN might be, she eventually switched career to become a nurse, feeling a 'NEED TO GIVE BACK and FULFILL HERSELF'.  On the other hand, Marco DeMarco, an emergency-service officer with the New York Police Department at that time had a different take on his own survival in the World Trade Center.  To quote him: 'WHY DID I GET OUT?  IF I HAD MADE A RIGHT INSTEAD OF A LEFT, IF I HAD BEEN TWO MINUTES SLOWER', likely he would have NOT survived 9/11💎💎💎

Given those 'miracle stories', do we then subscribe to the RANDOMNESS of LIFE?  NO sirrrrrs, let us PLAN by default.  Let us NOT subscribe to the RANDOMNESS of LIFE because that's NOT the way to LIVE LIFE.  So you might challenge me, WHY PLAN?  DON'T look far.  Let's just read and hear thousands of stories like the stories of O'Kane and DeMarco as they overwhelm us by the unfair RANDOMNESS of LIFE❌❌❌

Those epochal circumstances and fatal OR life-saving decisions so ordinarily meaningless that it's simultaneously easy to see either the 'supernatural guiding hand of a higher power' OR is it the sheer banality of CHANCE?  Suffice it to say that psychologists say that our brains SEEK PATTERN and PURPOSE.  And those traits do evolve to detect CAUSE and EFFECT.  It is very common for us to believe that 'EVERYTHING HAPPENS FOR A REASON' and that things are 'MEANT TO BE' but that should enlighten us that we are more likely to believe that significant events were 'FATED' than to attribute them to chance.  Let's take a leaf from SUPER MARIO, the main hero of the Mushroom Kingdom.  He's always bright and cheerful but you WON'T see the RANDOMNESS of LIFE in him❗❗❗