Wednesday, August 01, 2007

Life is a function

OK, this will be strange, but stick with me. I was a math major for 2 years in college, but this only involves high school math. A function is something like y = ax + bw + cz + d. It involves coefficients (a, b & c in my example), variables (x, w & z) and constants (d). The thing I liked best about functions was that when you plugged in the right coefficients, variables and constants, you always get the right answer.

It occurred to me yesterday that life is a function. You encounter decisions (variables) and some of these decisions are bigger than others (different coefficients) and you have some constants. The results you get are a function of the variables, coefficients and constants.

It would be nice if you could see this function ahead of time, then you'd be able to solve the function based on the variables and know how life would turn out. Unfortunately, you can't know all the variables and especially the coefficients (the importance of the decisions) at the time you're facing things.

But life is a function. The decisions we make lead directly to the life we live.

(Now why didn't Socrates or Plato or some other philosopher come up with that idea?)

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