Uncertainty and Disorder

Hi! Fantastic to see you. As I am scrawling away the days, trying to escape within words and paragraphs, I remembered how we all flounder through uncertainties and disorders of this life. I mulled over the things I would tell my younger self if I could travel back in time. The older I get, the less I claim to know and yet I feel sane enough to drop a few lines about it – or so I hope!

If you are able to read these words, it means that particles of light bounce off your screen and hit the retina of your eye. Every particle in the path travels at the speed of light and carry some information from the screen’s surface. But it’s not the same with the things we cannot see, like a microscopic particle. Even if you were to conduct an experiment to measure the position and speed of a microscopic particle you can’t do it with perfect accuracy. That’s called Heisenberg’s Uncertainty. While this principle in quantum physics is the basis of almost all our modern technology, I thought it would be interesting to raise the philosophical question of uncertainty. In everyday life we are uncertain about several things. Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle certainly does not have any philosophical implications. But he was surely suggesting a philosophy about human cognition when he said, “In the strong formulation of the causal law, ‘If we know the present with exactitude, we can predict the future,’ it is not the conclusion, but rather the premise that is false. We cannot know, as a matter of principle, the present in all its details.”

The world, with all its intricate brokenness, has undone so much of my certainty. Even if we rig our brains, we will never know what the future brings. Sometimes uncertainty can even take a toll on our health. But it’s a natural part of life and moving through it helps one build self-confidence and faith. Unfortunately our brains are wired to react negatively to uncertainty. So as it gets precarious, dealing with it is challenging. Looking too far ahead or behind can often take us down a rabbit hole of exhaustive thinking. So bring yourself back to the present and get your hands busy with some diversions such as reading, painting, writing, walking etc and I bet it would hypnotize your brain and can help calm down. And positivity begets strength.

Uncertainty in human acquaintances exists because we can’t control someone else’s heart. Sadly, this could create walls and push people away from each other. But the beauty is, that space created by uncertainty in relationships gives us a chance to grow strong. Communication is one way to ease the pain. Giving someone a cold shoulder or holding back love is cowardice and sometimes destructive. Learn to give love without the promise of getting something in return.

So, we can’t control the weather, we can’t control others, we can’t control the pandemic and there are several more things that are out of control in the grand scheme of our lives. But we can control our thoughts, choices, actions, and reactions. So we need to focus on that power we have, to create true peace.

In the kitchen, as I was boiling water in a saucepan I visualized the disorder of water molecules that moved faster and faster until it gained enough energy at boiling point, to break free of the bonds and escape as vapour. A measure of this disorder is called ‘entropy’ in thermodynamics. Our lives too have this tendency of being disordered rather than being simple and structured. Entropy increases over time and is quite irreversible. I’ll make an effort to brief why does entropy matter for life. Left to its own devices, life will decay. With time, our houses get messy, buildings crumble, weeds cover the garden, relationships go stagnant, and people age. But don’t be depressed of this notion. You can put up a fight against the pull of entropy. You can clean the house, preserve a building, pull out weeds from the garden, sustain a relationship by staying in love, and medicines can optimize the human life span. So you have to spend some energy to achieve stability.

There is entropy in experiences of everyday life. It is very unlikely that life will present us with a perfect situation that suits us. It’s more likely that we will have to choose something that is a far cry from what we reckon. We may already be living in such a mismatched condition. Having known this, we have the option to amend our lives with a good lifestyle and healthy hobbies. With all this entropy’s doing, time is a useful tool to ease the effect of entropy. By and by we must do work to create and maintain order in life.

If there is a scheme to life, shouldn’t we learn to understand it? Apologies if I have sabotaged you by suggesting principles from quantum physics and thermodynamics to elucidate this. However, be humble and be brave. Know thyself and heal thyself. And nothing is outside of His Providence.