Entropy: there, then, here, now

"The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind." Bob Dylan.

You would think that the more you move around, travel, discover, uncover, recover, the more experience you would have. Yet, it seems to work the other way round: the more you explore, the further you want to go, the more restless you become. It's like these travelers who have been to far reaching countries and are suddenly thrown back home. Except that the home is no longer there: the memories they had of it have been tainted and dispersed, blown in the wind. So, there is nothing left for them to yearn for in the past: they must look into the future.

Mind blowing

Movement and exploration are two simple manifestations of a single phenomenon: curiosity. Curiosity is what drives every person on this planet to step away from the comforting and familiar, to try, to fail, to walk into the heart of chaos in an attempt to find out what makes life what it is. If anything, it is like triggering a chemical reaction among the components of one's existence so as to isolate its core elements, its elementary particles. Outer travel is just another way to bring about the chemistry of the world to us.

But since nothing is gained and nothing is lost in such entreprise, what is the point of it? After all, we commonly yearn to obtain knowledge, skills, understanding, wisdom. We get an education, we get training, we get jobs, we get material possessions, we collect acquaintances, friends, partners, children, but none of this ever seems to be of any value in the end. We seem to have gained nothing but wasted our time and lost our way.

Fizzled out

This is because settling was never the real purpose in the first place. The point of a chemical reaction, just like alchemy, is to bring about a transformation: from ordinary to extraordinary, from dull to shiny, from stone to gold. Exploration is about transforming the mind, movement is about transforming the body. The places where you've been, the sights that you've seen, the people you have met serve no purpose but to reinvent yourself in this world. What we are along the timeline of our existence is nothing but a series of coincidental and self-engineered transformations.

What about those who have never travelled? Those who have lived in the same environments, in their societies, communities, families? What about those who shut themselves from the influences of the outer world and resist the perceived chaos of the universe? They would be disappointed to know that theirs is a very familiar pattern of the worldly chemistry. In fact, they are essential markers against which we measure the degree of change in us. Those friends who have remained when you left, upon seeing them, you cannot help but realise how much you have changed while you were away.

 
It makes sense to accept that the order of our lives is nothing but streamlined chaos transformed by our own storytelling. There is no direction, no destiny, no fate, no determinism nor fatality: everything is chemistry. Yet it doesn't mean that we should stop believing in a mythology, a dreaming, a free-will or a spirit. In fact, the ultimate transformation that we can bring upon ourselves is to transcend our mind and body so as to unleash our imagination. Without imagination, there is no curiosity, without curiosity, there is no life. Curiosity is the essence of Humanity.