Whenever things don’t go right in my life and I feel like I’m trapped in a series of unfortunate events, there’s something I often do: (1) sit down with a book in my hand and then (2) flip it open to a random page!

Why, you ask? Well, aside from this being a silly thing that I do when trying to guess the before-story of a particular book that I read a long time ago - it does however serves a slightly larger purpose all the same. At least in my eyes it does!

Ever wonder, whether anything and everything that happens in this universe are totally random, isolated incidents, or rather secretly connected to each other? An invisible link beyond everything that happens and everything that follows, even if they seem totally random to naked eyes? Is anything really random or even isolated for that matter? If not then, is there any hidden formula that nature reveals herself though? And if so, does that mean everything is pre-defined and we are just living the life that we are ‘supposed’ to life and making choices that we are ‘supposed’ to make because its all destined by that ultimate “formula” of nature?

I’ve often thought about it, and the way I make sense of my own universe is that everything is ultimately connected to everything else. It may not seem that way always but it’s there. Everybody is connected to everybody, every event that takes place is connect to and co-dependent on each other, every decision we make individually affects us collectively and eventually affecting the entire chain of events that takes place in the universe. Now when I say that I don’t mean blood relations or spiritual/emotional connection that we share with others, and it might not be as obvious as something like Bush deciding to going to war in Iraq and hence affecting (more like messing up) a buck load of people’s life or a simple event of cause and effect like pulling a trigger and releasing a bullet at 1200 m/s! This connections I speak of are much subtler, deeper in forms and goes well beyond the usual which we may not realize exist or make sense out of at times.

I imagine the universe as an intricate web of connections between events and elements that expands through out time and space where any changes, no matter how subtle that is, creates a ripple effect, setting off a chain of events that in terns affects the structure of the web itself!

Now all changes in time and space, no matter how tiny or big they are can happen in two fundamentally different ways: (1) By choice: The kind of changes that we can control ourselves; The kind that results from choices that we make consciously from a set of available options. An example of that kind of changes would be choosing different routes to go to a party where each route can lead into slightly or radically different scenarios (feel free to use your imagination here) And (2) By Random Order/Events: The kind of changes that takes place randomly that we can’t control consciously. Rolling of a dice or picking up a winning lottery ticket qualifies as such events.

In both kind of changes, the fact that remains true is the changes of events that follows. Whether its obvious or not, for every tiny changes that occurs in present has its effect on immediate near future. In case of winning a lottery the “effect” is easy to witness and explain whereas rolling a “4” in a board game and then getting a call from a friend from whom you haven’t heard from in years, is almost impossible to recognize or draw a rational connection. But the fact still remains true. If you were to roll a “6” in stead of “4” you might not have gotten the call or even if you did, it might’ve been at a different time or may be the conversation would change. Bottom line: something will be different this time around and your life won’t follow the same exact path that it would’ve in case of “4”. Same goes for “1” “2” “3” or any other number that the dice may roll out and in each scenario you’ll have a slightly different life to live! 

On the other hand, at any given moment there’s an finite number (no matter how large the number is, still finite) of choices that we could make given a finite set of conditions, couldn’t we?

Now if those are the cases, then no one can blame the ones who think there might be some kind of formula where each “incidents/events” or “choices” functions as variables in the equation and the result indicates the outcome for that particular “combination” of “variables”? In other words, an ultimate formula of nature that can predict the future and reveal the course of our lives!

Everytime I think about the possibility of such formula existing, I feel a chill (the good kind) running down my spine. (That should explain why I felt the same when I picked up a copy of the movie “Pi” and start reading the synopsis in the back of the cover!) In reality though,…all I know is that every time I sit down with a book in my hand, and flip it open to a random page, the course of my life changes! In my universe, each page of that book contains a unique course of life for me and whether I can tell picking which page will turn my life which way or not, I know this much: a change is happening. And that’s all I want sometimes - a change!