The Wave Equation of Existence
My all-time favourite opening line from a novel has always been the one from Gabriel Garcia Marquez's "One Hundred Years of Solitude". It goes like this:
Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano BuendÃa was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.
I read the book more than 30 years ago and the magic of that first line still lingers clearly in my mind. In just a simple sentence, so much is conveyed--mystery and tragedy (why is he facing the firing squad?), a sense of epic time ("many years later...remember that distant afternoon..."), nostalgia (remembrance of a childhood spent with his father) and wonderment (why was ice such a novelty?).
I'm so glad that they are releasing a miniseries in Netflix based on the book soon. And that very first line itself was cleverly used cinematically as the teaser trailer for the series. It's a beautiful introduction to this masterpiece of an epic that truly defined the magical realism genre: poignantly whimsical, filled with incidental delights masterfully woven into a thematic fabric of subtle socio-political commentary. It is a multi-generational tale of the Buendia family set in the fictitious town of Mocondo. The trailer made me want to read the book again and I'm certain that I'll derive so much more insight from a repeat read.
Similarly with books which I had read during my teenage years like Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird". I was probably too young to understand the Southern racism theme in the novel then, but I thoroughly enjoyed the world as seen from the point of view of a child, one with another memorable first line: When he was nearly thirteen my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow.
So much of who I am is shaped by the books I've read and movies that I've seen. Maybe they awaken the archetypes in my subconscious which I resonate strongly with. Our genes determine a lot of our characteristics--physical, emotional and intellectual. But sometimes these genes are not able to find their expression due to the limiting factor of the environment. The environment serves up the "boundary conditions" that determine the possible solutions to the wave equation of our existence.
External content from books and movies are like excitation energy that rouses our dormant genes and push them into full expression. While philosophers debate the existence or non-existence of Free Will, we'll continue to live the only way we know, as no matter how much you scratch your head and deliberate, you will always end up with the present moment and doing the things you are doing.
You are the unfolding expression of your genes, like a flower opening up into full bloom, fulfilling your role in the ecosystem of the garden which you sprouted from. Deciding the kind of person that you want to be is part and parcel of that unfolding. The feeling of agency that we have in determining the course of our lives is simply a feature of this causal chain.
All the beautiful books that had touched me as a child, teenager and adult came into my orbit because I had 'attracted' them through the filter of my mind and also the consequence of zillions of micro-decisions that I had made. Driven by the inexorable pulse of life, I had been led to specific shelves in specific bookstores and libraries, resulting in me spending hours and days perusing pages of sentences filled with potent insights.
I can see broad patterns in this grand unfolding; the undulation, the ebb and flow of the elan vital that thrusts one headlong into one's destiny. Embrace it and swim in its warm currents. Life has to be lived through the many irreducible steps of its unfolding computation. And that is the only that we can solve the wave equation of existence.
