You Never Know
living with radical contingency as a spiritual practice
For both Whitehead and contemporary pragmatists, contingency and chance mark the universe as unfinished. All inquiries are therefore open to revision, and every life is itself a matter of invention and experiment. To live with dedicated awareness and sensitivity to this radical contingency is, I claim, a religious or at least a quasi-religious way of life, a spiritual discipline, something worthy of surviving the de-theologizing of process thought. |
Moment of Tangency: A Glimpse of What Might Have Been
ETYMOLOGY A tangent is where a line 'just touches' a curve, sharing the same angle for a bit before carrying off to infinity.
WHAT IS THAT MUSIC? "Dandelion Snow" by Ian Paul Livingstone "Still Water Reflection" by Simon Charles Por
WHAT IS THAT MUSIC? "Dandelion Snow" by Ian Paul Livingstone "Still Water Reflection" by Simon Charles Por
You and I have never met, many times before.
Our paths might have crossed once or twice online, or passing in the street, We might've lived in the same neighborhood all our lives, but against incredible odds, we just happened to miss each other. It's a big world, after all.
Our days must be filled with these chance encounters, that for a million tiny reasons, never actually take place. Accidental strangers, who just happened to miss their cue. who share everything in common, except for time and place. For years, their stories might've been happening in parallel, harmonizing from somewhere across the world, but neither has any idea that the other even exists.
If two lines are truly parallel, it means they'll never actually meet. It's hard not to wonder where they are right now, veering away on a tangent, in some parallel universe, Hard not to glance at a stranger in a crowd, and imagine the life you might have shared, if things had been different, and feel a pang of missed connection as you carry on your separate ways, leaving nothing but an echo of something that might have been.
You never know how many things had to happen exactly right for you to meet the one you love, You never know how easily fate might have tipped you onto some other course, meeting some other person, who would feel like a soulmate. Maybe you'd still be telling your friends it was always meant to be, As if you knew all along that your paths would cross.
Or maybe you'd look back at your life and realize: it was nothing personal-it's all just a coincidence. You never know.
CREDITS: All content licensed CC BY 2.0 ?creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 from Vimeo.com
Relief by Daniel Hillel-Tuch
Sutton through the bolex by FredBL Durrett Family 8mm
Films Joans Birthday Dan Prom Backyard 1961 by Jake Durrett Hand Made by Matthew Psyllos big mama's hand-processing 16mm color reversal workshop by Craig Scheihing
Our paths might have crossed once or twice online, or passing in the street, We might've lived in the same neighborhood all our lives, but against incredible odds, we just happened to miss each other. It's a big world, after all.
Our days must be filled with these chance encounters, that for a million tiny reasons, never actually take place. Accidental strangers, who just happened to miss their cue. who share everything in common, except for time and place. For years, their stories might've been happening in parallel, harmonizing from somewhere across the world, but neither has any idea that the other even exists.
If two lines are truly parallel, it means they'll never actually meet. It's hard not to wonder where they are right now, veering away on a tangent, in some parallel universe, Hard not to glance at a stranger in a crowd, and imagine the life you might have shared, if things had been different, and feel a pang of missed connection as you carry on your separate ways, leaving nothing but an echo of something that might have been.
You never know how many things had to happen exactly right for you to meet the one you love, You never know how easily fate might have tipped you onto some other course, meeting some other person, who would feel like a soulmate. Maybe you'd still be telling your friends it was always meant to be, As if you knew all along that your paths would cross.
Or maybe you'd look back at your life and realize: it was nothing personal-it's all just a coincidence. You never know.
CREDITS: All content licensed CC BY 2.0 ?creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 from Vimeo.com
Relief by Daniel Hillel-Tuch
Sutton through the bolex by FredBL Durrett Family 8mm
Films Joans Birthday Dan Prom Backyard 1961 by Jake Durrett Hand Made by Matthew Psyllos big mama's hand-processing 16mm color reversal workshop by Craig Scheihing