Life on the Sinewave

If you’re anything like me, you’d prefer that life follow one steady, level path towards improvement rather than some up-and-down roller coaster ride. Unfortunately, it doesn’t. Even worse, it’s not enough that we’re all riding sinewaves variegated by phases of ease and periods of nail-biting dread; the problem is that everyone of us is trying to tame our own unique sinewave. We’re all either on the upslope or the downslope and none of us are synchronized.

Physicists have discovered that it’s not only you and I who are on this cosmic pogo stick. Everything in nature, down to the electrons spinning around atoms, is suffering the same fate. We used to think electrons were following a smooth trajectory around atomic nuclei but obsessive nerds in their quantum physics labs have discovered that those crazy electrons are on a miniature dolphin ride within that elliptical orbit around their anchors just like you and I. Who’d a thought it?

Quantum physicists theorize that if all the oscillating electron orbits of various atoms lined up just perfectly — or, more accurately, “misaligned” just perfectly — they could pass right through each other without the slightest adverse effect. Color me skeptical because I’m pretty certain something would go wrong and what starts as two belligerent electrons battling for ownership of some ultra-microscopic real estate, would spread to all their relatives…devolve to atomic hostage taking…advance to Middle Eastern (yet extremely miniature) bloodshed…and end up as a full-on Hiroshima-style atomic reaction.

Now, all you snooty science types may be looking down your noses at my quantum ignorance but one thing I know is life, and every stratum of life mimics the same broken strategies that every other stratum falls victim to. The discord that exists in humanity, also exists at every other level of nature.

“But we’re at the top of the food chain and civilized and know how to coexist,” you say. I’ve got two words for ya; Donald Trump!

Before you get your panties in a wad and hit the delete button, hear me out. I’m neither promoting him nor attacking him. I’m saying that, as if by magic, the man has totally unified America’s vastly disparate special interest groups into two highly cohesive but polar-opposite camps. The Trumpophiles range from moderate approval to those who believe he’s the coming messiah (congregated heavily towards the extreme end of that spectrum). The Trumpophobes range from moderate skeptics to those who believe he’s the spawn of Satan (also favoring the radical fringe). The line in the sand has been etched and nobody is straddling it.

At the end of the day, he’s just a man — no more broken than you or I and no more anointed that either of us (albeit with a much larger pulpit to exhibit his brokenness from). The big mystery is the strength and synchronicity of the personal reactions to him — reactions he may be aiming for but does not ultimately control. You personally chose how you would react and I personally chose how I would react. A bit more than half of Americans chose to install him in the oval office but nearly every American seems to have rented out emotional space in their brain to this solitary human being.

Covalent Bonds
I claimed that belligerent electrons, not unlike their human cousins, would likely go to war, but there are actually instances in chemistry where neighboring atoms sign peace treaties and agree to share electrons. Their outermost family members spiral about not one but two cozied-up atomic nuclei. That, in fact, is the strongest bond in the universe.

So, what if we could dial down the emotional amplitude on life’s oscilloscope to the point where those asynchronous sinewaves were so near a straight line that they could merge? What if you quit being so pissed that your party lost and your neighbor quit being so haughty about the fact that his party came out on top (or vice-versa)?

I’m not suggesting that we switch off our intellects or abandon our passions. I’m suggesting that we admit both our emotions and our cognition are filled with flaws, flaws which could possibly be balanced by the differently-flawed emotions and intellects of our neighbors and co-workers.

Or we could just opt for the atomic solution and leave the planet to a silicon-based lifeform.

A meeting of great minds who think alike