Aweh fellow Ruminants & Groupies in day 472 of Re-Modified Lock Down Level 4 and still alcohol free.
Period as a semi-retired pensioner: 98 days
The topic of today’s Ruminant Pink Friday ™ is an updated and abbreviated excerpt from a speech I gave at Nerine’s 50th birthday celebration regarding our family and marriage in October 2016. The title of the speech was the philosopher and the matriarch. Our household is a benevolent matriarchy as many of the best households are. No oppressive patriarchy in the Young household.
My nature is to think about stuff endlessly and then to pontificate pompously and at length about the fabric of reality until you can’t tolerate it anymore. What is for lunch or dinner is not front of mind. Peanut butter sandwiches will do if there is bread or peanut butter in the cupboard which someone else bought. So, to set the tone I will start with a suitable quote about the fabric of reality:
“Every atom in your body came from a star that exploded. And the atoms in your left hand probably came from a different star than your right hand. We are all stardust. You couldn’t be here if stars hadn’t exploded, because the elements – the carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, iron, all the things that matter for evolution and for life – weren’t created at the beginning of time. They were created in the nuclear furnaces of stars, and the only way for them to get into your body is if those stars were kind enough to explode. So, forget Jesus. The stars died so that you could be here today.”
― Lawrence M. Krauss
I realise that most “normal” people don’t think about or care where the atoms in their hands come from. I just like to think about the big stuff and not about the minutiae of life like lunch and ensuring the fridge and cupboards are stocked with all the necessities of life.
I also enjoy thinking about interesting problems and therefore often pose problems for discussion with our family. One eventful breakfast I posed the problem about a fox, a chicken and a packet of seeds. You have a fox, a chicken, and a packet of seeds. You must cross a river in a small boat which can fit only you and one other thing. If you leave the fox with the chicken, he will eat it; if you leave the chicken with the seeds, she will eat them. How can you get all three across safely? Now Nerine saw this as a rather dumb problem with a rather obvious solution which is summarised in the diagram below.
Relax the constraints and so much more is possible. For the geeks amongst you the solution to the constrained problem posed can be found here: https://riddlesbrainteasers.com/fox-chicken-sack-grain/
This led me to do some deep thinking and analysis, as I do, and to propose a model using Venn diagrams, as one does, regarding our respective models of the world.
Nerine comes from the perspective that there is self-evident abundance in the world and thoughts about constraints and limits just get in the way. After we got married Nerine informed me that I needed to have children. I had certainly not considered this as a need up to that point and had it not been for Nerine clearly articulating my needs there would have been no children. This unacknowledged need has changed my life more than anything else I have done and enriched my life more than I could have conceived at the time.
We do, however, need to circle back to constraints and limits. Sometimes constraints and limits are real but sometimes they reflect your own lack of imagination. Science and the real world are filled with constraints. If you train as a lawyer, they teach you to become extremely skilled at creating wiggle room on all issues. There are mitigating circumstances, hardship, clemency, acts of God, material adverse changes, appeals and any number of terms and conditions used to avoid facing harsh realities. However, in the real world there is also no shower of money from heaven and unless you belong to the billionaire’s club or have access to government tenders your needs bump into financial reality. This has certainly caused many free and frank exchanges, including some swearing, between Nerine and me. Having said that sometimes my limited thinking has been exposed and looking at things from a different perspective does allow constraints and limits to be relaxed.
Being obsessed with constraints and limits hampers your imagination and is not conducive to being successful or happy. Nerine has helped me fulfil needs that I didn’t even know I had and enriched my life.
Inevitably, as I must, this brings me to the deeper question: What do you really need? An acknowledged need of mine is that I need to understand this, and I would welcome your views on this.
Thank you for all the helpful suggestions and comments. Please keep them up.
Regards
Bruce
Ruminant Pink Friday 