Whatever You Want It To Mean.....

....... In The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy a super computer determined that the meaning of life was/is 42. Naturally I assumed that this was a wry joke on the meaninglessness of life - can I say that? Maybe an accountant would understand - break everything down to a number and you've got the answer or something like that.

Well shame on my ignorance!! It took a note on FB to clarify the "concept of 42." Apparently the author of the book, Douglas Adams, was a computer nerd and knew several computer languages including ASCII. The asterisk (*) in ASCII actually means - "Whatever you want it to mean" and to create an asterisk in ASCII you enter the numerals 42.

The meaning of life - 42 - then becomes "Whatever you want it to mean."

So, applying the statement to this blog, the meaning of life, for me, would be "Whatever happens." Well, on the surface, maybe. But I like to think that, whatever happens has more of a cosmic meaning, rather than just the randomness of life.

The full statement is, "Life is what happens, when you are making other plans." So, again, you might set out by making life mean - whatever you want it to - and then your plans get rearranged because reality happens.

Maybe I should say "Life is Reality." I don't think so. I still want to believe in dreams, in fantasy, in Art or in the art of making life what you want it to be or mean.

Now, do we have to have a discussion of the difference between "being" and "meaning" - maybe another day.

The picture? It's a section of a sweater I knit in a pattern known as "crazy quilt." That is - you create the article, or garment by piecing random scraps together to form a harmonious design. It originally applied to fabric, but I created a randomly patterned fabric by knitting scraps of yarn together.

I am always surprised when life, however pieced together it may seem, turns out to be amazing.

Have an amazing day.

Full Circle

Another circle, I think, has been completed, with the death of Steven Hawking. Not only did Steven die on Pi day, the day Albert Einstein was born, March 14. Hawking was born on the anniversary of the death of Galileo, January 8.

Steven left us on the day we celebrate eternity or at least one of the most famous recurring numbers, Pi, the relationship of the diameter of a circle to its circumference. What could be more fitting.

Galileo, Einstein, Hawking are famous because of their revolutionary thinking. To say that they think (or thought) beyond the normal hum-drum of daily life, is an understatement! Their minds were  in the cosmos, musing on why there is life at all.

As we muddle through the randomness of our days, they have seen the order in this chaos, understood much of what we cannot see and given us hope that there are others out there who will continue their work.

Perhaps another brilliant mind, born on a special day, will take us out of the darkness, this current political and religious regime has created.

This would be someone who does not accept lies as facts, who does not praise ignorance as a virtue and who does not surrender their reason to a senseless belief that a god will save them.

We are living in hostile times and moving into a great unknown - artificial intelligence - be afraid, be very afraid.

The picture, I have used it too often. Can you sense my panic? Would there were someone, with us now, who could lead us from the darkness into the light.

Have a enlightened day!