Making Peace with Randomness
My darling husband, Scott, has been teaching himself quantum physics for the last fifteen years, give or take. Consequently, I have learned a little quantum physics myself -in the way that you learn things just by talking about them. One of the realities of life that I have begun to make peace with due to skimming the surface of theoretical physics is the wonderful, and awful randomness of the universe. And the lengths humans go to to pretend that it isn’t.
The news this week of the collapse of a condo building in Surfside, FL, is a moment of randomness that makes people uncomfortable. We want the world to make sense. We want to be able to see and identify the causes of events, so we can assure ourselves that something like that could never happen to us. A friend gets a cancer diagnosis, while sad and supportive, we also think, “Well, that won’t happen to me because I eat right, exercise and never smoked.” The news reports that a young woman was raped and killed after walking home alone from a bar, and we think,” What was she doing walking around alone? I would never take a risk like that.” Bad outcomes have clear causes. Avoid the causes and avoid the bad outcomes. Pretty simple life equation.
Except, it isn’t. Life doesn’t really work that way. I am sure that in the end we will know why the condo building collapsed. Maybe it had structural defects that went unnoticed. Maybe the sand beneath it was too unstable. Maybe a condo owner did some remodeling (open concept anyone) and took out load bearing structures. But, we will never really know everything. People - young, old, worthy, and unworthy, went to bed. In the wee hours of the morning, the floor literally fell out from under them. From the warmth and safety of sleep to abject terror in a matter of seconds. Plunging into darkness. Hitting the bottom. Debris falling on top before being able to move out of the way. Random. We won’t ever really know why some lived and some died. It was random. Random cannot be prevented. It cannot be planned for. Too many possibilities. Too little time to address them all.
Accepting this randomness goes against our natures. If this kind of randomness exists, then something awful might happen to me. Bad things happen to people who “deserve” them somehow. They were careless. They ignored good advice. They took unnecessary risks -like renting a condo on Surfside beach for a family vacation, and then getting into bed for a good night’s sleep.
I’m not arguing that no cause and effect exists. Although some theories in quantum physics posit otherwise, I can see cause and effect all around me. But, I can also see the randomness all around me. Events such as the tragedy in Florida are important reminders to the rest of us. Random, horrible things happen. Random, horrible things happen to people - “good” people and “bad” ones. There is peace in learning to accept this. Quantum particles are in flux all around us and in us. They move, and collide, and connect in ways we do not yet fully understand. In fact, the particles may not even really exist unless someone looks for them. The peace comes from not looking. The peace is in accepting.
