I am a Physicist's Daughter

Lyrics: "And the songbirds keep singing, like they know the score" - Eva Cassidy



If we’re to look at everything as a fraction of time in a long chain of events that eventually add up to a sequence and a result, then even the single, smallest deviation can lead us to a drastically different end. This is called the butterfly effect, one of the most well known parts of chaos theory, partly because of that whole butterfly-flap-its-wings-and-a-tornado-occurs-around-the-world hypothetical and Ashton Kutcher’s Oscar-winning [not] performance in a movie bearing its title. This kind of thinking has often driven me to think about my parents – who met at random in a movie-ticket line – or decisions my grandparents took during WWII in Russia, or lucky yes’s and no’s along the way of life, and try to map out what my alternate present would be like if those things had been tweaked along the way. In a very Jorge Luis Borges kind of way, I’d be interesting to see that garden he writes about where every path separates and all the infinite possibilities of one’s life are happening simultaneously.

I’ve thought about this recently because I’m caught in a wonderful moment of observing people I’ve known for years fulfilling the dreams I heard them talk about behind a school desk, at a sleep over, over coffee, in Harvard square. At each stage of my twenty-one years I’ve been lucky enough to meet incredible individuals, and to watch so many of them presently take flight makes me so deliriously and sentimentally happy that it’s almost too dramatic to admit. The oxymoronically predictable uncertainty of chaos theory has led most of these people to pursue their dreams, adjusting them as time or opportunity saw fit, but steadfastly walking in that direction anyway. Bankers, lawyers, Olympians, philanthropists, pastry chefs, mothers – it matters little that we all shared a similar point of origin, because now we’re spread out all over the world and in all walks of life. And as long as we’re still holding on to each other – through distance, through time – I couldn’t be happier.

It occurs to me that this is what we are for each other, a person we meet at a crossroads, before each moves on, hopefully blessed and enriched by the other. I have a friend who just got out of the army, one who is married to a priest and just gave birth to her second beautiful daughter, and another who is touring in a band in Spain. At the same time, I know people who have wanted to be doctors for years and are now entering Medical School, who are pursuing a PdD, or writing books, or applying to graduate schools. In the tiniest moment of daydreaming that I am frequently caught in, I can think of goals that are being achieved and decisions that are being taken, of passions that are being realized and ordinary paths that have been tossed overboard in favor of unconventional ones. And that, according to Frost at least, will hopefully make all the difference.

It seems somewhat silly to be happy simply because people are doing what they said they would, but I like this notion of defining “success” as the “reaching of hopes.” When it comes to growing up, and the decisions and responsibilities it incurs, I think of how little we truly know about the larger paths we’re taking, but how blessed we are to have a full life to question and search. We shouldn’t be limited by uncertainty, but should instead welcome its power. My rudimentary understanding of chaos theory (which is to say what I know from random reading of Richard Feynman and wikipedia) has taught me that:

a.) In uncertainty, there lies limitless potential.
b.) There are no ordinary moments.

And that is my little, rambling, naïve, slightly incoherent, optimistic twist on the unavoidable reality of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle of Quantum Physics - you can never tell with 100% certainty where you (or an electron) are or will be – and the opportunities that come with this freedom. If nothing else, considering how much change can occur in our lives from a single alteration has reminded me that the laws of math, physics, and chaos are not just something we memorized in high school.