Thursday, June 12

Post 1762, Day 163 of 2014
- 1,259 days since I started this blog -

Daily Comment

This is where the humor (and the pathos) comes in: Unintended consequences.

At any given moment, I try to act in the way that will have the best result.

Whether I am responding to some external stimulus or I'm trying to execute a script (i.e., a plan), the idea is that the action I take will result in a positive outcome - in the future.

Since nobody has a clue what the future will bring - least of all me - it is pretty useless to try and predict which course of action will bring about some desired result. Desired results are the reason everybody worries about the future, frightened of the disappointment.

The simple answer is to have no expectations about it. Your desired outcome isn't a function of advance planning, should it somehow materialize, it will be the result of a million coincidences, the interaction of your actions with everybody else's, with every element in the space-time continuum. 

The amazing list of things that happened to bring me to be typing on this computer at this time are 99.99% the result of things that aren't me - aren't part of my lifetime experience or actions. Many of the things that bring me to this point started before I was born, before I came to Syracuse. 

Many of the things that bring me to this point seem to have no relationship to my present. Babbage's 19th-Century steam driven calculating machine didn't know it would end up enabling my blogging one hundred fifty years later.

There used to be a show on PBS called Connections, which traced some of the many, far-flung, irrelevant and seemingly unrelated historical events that led up to a modern event or invention. I loved that show, but only recently integrated its lesson: 

Nobody knows the consequences of their actions. Not beforehand, anyway. Ripple effect, butterfly effect, call it what you will.

I heard a great story about a car accident in the desert in Saudi Arabia, where you can drive for mile after mile, and never see another car. In this case, one driver was in a hurry to get home from an oil-field site, had been driving for hours at high speed, maybe a little inattentive, yet managed to clip the tail of a limo at one of only a few places where highways crossed.
In order for this accident to occur, and it did occur, thousands of minute circumstances had to come together perfectly. Either car going 1% slower; leaving seconds earlier or later; carrying a different passenger load (one had a Prince and friends, the other only the driver); different tire inflation; any of these and a thousand more things, and the accident doesn't happen.

When you're standing on the banks, mid-river, you can't see its source, or where it empties. Toss in a stone; the ripples go up-, down-, and cross-stream, and you never see the lotus pads they lift so slightly or where the ripples stop.

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 Food and Diet Section

2014 Daily Weight

Today's Weight:         210.0 lbs

Previous Weight:        210.0 lbs

Day Net Loss/Gain:      - 0.0 lbs

Diet Comment

Nothing.

Food Log 

Breakfast
A Quest bar.

Lunch

Roasted turkey breast salad (with celery and home-made mayonnaise) on Spring Mix greens, baby kale, and cole slaw mix. Put some of the salad on Ezekiel 4:9 Flax bread, too.

Dinner
A whole bag of Wholesome Medley (dark chocolate, peanuts, almonds, cashews, dried cherries).

Snack
A Quest bar.

Liquid Intake

   Coffee:  28 oz.   Water: 112+ oz.  2 shots of some kind of whiskey and cinnamon liquor.

Please leave a comment if you visit my blog. Thank you!