Thermo-Dynamic Miracles
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Thermo-Dynamic Miracles
In chapter nine of Watchmen, Dr. Manhattan returns back to Earth from his exile on Mars, and he takes Laurie, his ex-girlfriend, on a trip to the red planet. The world was on the verge of a nuclear war, and Dr. Manhattan is the only man that could stop it from happening. Laurie argues that point with him on Mars, but he remained unmoved and unconvinced. Dr. Manhattan views life from a different platform from normal human beings, and he sees everything by its atomic structure. Human beings, to him, are no different from a grain of sand on the ground, like how a dead human being is not structurally different from one that is alive. Life and death does not make a difference for him, and thus he does not see a reason for him to rescue mankind from a disaster that they have created for themselves. That is, however, until Laurie realizes through their conversation, that the man that she's always hated, the same man that raped her mother, was also her father. From there, Dr. Manhattan's opinion towards life dramatically changed as a result, and here is the speech that he gave towards the end of the chapter, in regards to the miracle that is life.What Dr. Manhattan meant was that the unpredictability of the human reproduction system is one of the greatest miracles of all time, the way that only one sperm reaches the egg to form a baby that grows up to become a human being. The odds involved in such a natural process are so great, and yet it has been overlooked by human beings because they happen so often. And thus, he was convinced to go back to Earth and attempt to stop the nuclear war from occurring - though it was already too late by the time he got back. Still, he made a very interesting point in which I managed to relate to, which is interesting since the character was shaped to be this alien being of sorts being distant from mankind for the most part. I remember reading that chapter the night before I caught Watchmen, and how it suddenly rang a bell in my head at that moment in time. You know how sometimes, on repeated viewing of a movie or reading of a book, you happen to notice to realize things that you've never thought about in the past. Well, that part of the book was like that for me, the way it made me realize the miracle that is life, by itself. Numbers don't like, because you just cannot fight logic the way that you can fight an opinion. Life, by itself, is against all odds, and the human being that is produced out of that improbability is, by itself, a miracle by any count.
In chapter nine of Watchmen, Dr. Manhattan returns back to Earth from his exile on Mars, and he takes Laurie, his ex-girlfriend, on a trip to the red planet. The world was on the verge of a nuclear war, and Dr. Manhattan is the only man that could stop it from happening. Laurie argues that point with him on Mars, but he remained unmoved and unconvinced. Dr. Manhattan views life from a different platform from normal human beings, and he sees everything by its atomic structure. Human beings, to him, are no different from a grain of sand on the ground, like how a dead human being is not structurally different from one that is alive. Life and death does not make a difference for him, and thus he does not see a reason for him to rescue mankind from a disaster that they have created for themselves. That is, however, until Laurie realizes through their conversation, that the man that she's always hated, the same man that raped her mother, was also her father. From there, Dr. Manhattan's opinion towards life dramatically changed as a result, and here is the speech that he gave towards the end of the chapter, in regards to the miracle that is life.
"Thermo-Dynamic miracles, events with odds against so astronomical, they're effectively impossible. Like oxygen spontaneously becoming gold, I long to observe such a thing. And yet, in each human coupling, a thousand million sperm vie for a single egg. Multiply those odds by countless generations, against the odds of your ancestors being alive; meeting; siring this precise son; that exact daughter, until your mother loves a man she has every reason to hate, and of that union, of the thousand million children competing for fertilization, it was you, only you, that emerged. To distill so specific a form from that chaos of improbability, like turning air to gold, that is the crowning unlikelihood. The Thermo-Dynamic Miracle. But the world is so full of people, so crowded with these miracles that they become commonplace and we forget - I forget. We gaze continually at the world and it grows dull in our perceptions. Yet seen from another's vantage point, as if new, it may still take the breath away. Come, dry your eyes, for you are life, rarer than a quark and unpredictable beyond the dreams of Heisenberg; the clay in which the forces that shape all things leave their fingerprints most clearly. Dry your eyes, and let's go home."
There are times when you think about a special person in your life, and you can't help but wonder how things would have been different if that person didn't come into your life. Like, if you made a different decision in a certain point in time, that person might not have known you at all, in which case he or she may not have made an impact in your life, whatsoever. The parents aside, since they were directly responsible for your mere existence, all the other people that came along are here because of some decision that one of you made. I think about such things a lot, like, what if I didn't talk to this friend of mine from the first day of school, how things would have turned out different for me. It always seems worse as compared to what I have now, though it would have worked out somehow, anyway. It's just the way we rationalize what we have right now, and I suppose it humbles someone, in a way. I often think about how easy it would have been to have not made the decision that I made, and made another decision at that moment in time, instead. Like, I remember that day in guitar class after school when I first talked to my friend, Ahmad. He was hanging out with his friends for the most part, and I really didn't know anybody there very well. I just struck up a conversation, and he is still my dear friend until this day.
The same goes for my significant other, the beloved one, Neptina Andrea Khir. I love her, in every sense of those overused and cliched words. I don't remember a passing day whereby I did not look back and think about how easily it would have been for us, if one of us decided to not talk to the other person. It is a story that I am proud to tell people about, because I feel that it is a beautiful story, probably the best story that I have to tell people. Our meeting before the Death Cab for Cutie concert was completely unrehearsed, unscheduled, and spontaneous. It was a spur of the moment thing, a split second decision that decided my happiness from last August until this day. I was in town to run an errand for my mother, and the errand was done a little earlier than I imagined. So I made my way down to the Esplanade about two hours earlier than the time the concert was starting, and settled down on one of those triangular seats at the lobby area. It was just me and my iPod for company for the most part, until the game of Sudoko became unbearably boring. So I turned my attention to the girl that sat down next to me a while ago, a girl who was wearing a Jaws t-shirt and had a schoolbag in her laps. From the moment she sat down next to me to the moment I decided to stop playing the stupid game on my iPod Touch, she was just staring out into the distance and doing absolutely nothing at all. So, as an impulse, I talked to a complete stranger at that time, who turned out to be the love of my life.
I can't help, sometimes, to look and wonder how things could have turned out differently for us, or at least for me. You know, I could have chosen not to run that errand for my mother, or maybe I could have done it an hour later instead. Maybe I could have chosen a different seat, hung out at a different place, or just continued to play with my Sudoko and not strike up that conversation that I had with her. A lot of things could have happened differently on that day, at that place, in that very moment. Even on her side, things could have been very different on that day itself. She could have chosen not to go to the concert altogether, because she was going alone with nobody else to accompany her. She could have hung out at another place, or maybe the function that was happening at that place where she was sitting did not happen at all. Maybe if she stayed in school a little longer that day, or missed the previous bus, picked a different seat, or deemed that I was too weird or too creepy to entertain. Both of us made many decisions that day subconsciously that caused our paths to cross, and it still amazes me to this day when I think about it, every day, in regards to how all those little decisions amounted to such a big decision at the end of all things. Like, the way I chose not to have dinner that night because I was too lazy to do so - same thing. If I gave in to my hunger and ate something, all of this wouldn't have happened. Close call, right there.
But it's more than just two people meeting amidst a billion others out there. It is more than probability in a population, more than just two people meeting at the right place, at the right time. It goes even deeper into the biology of things, like what Dr. Manhattan mentioned at the beginning of this entry, how the millions and millions of sperm battles each other to be the only one that reaches the egg. That process alone is a probability impossibility, but it happened to each and every one of us at the very beginning of things, for us to end up as who we are today. It was that one sperm and that one egg, out of the millions and millions of other sperms. I'm sure if it was a different sperm, things would have turned out differently for many of us - but it was that one. Her parents and my parents, through generations and generations of reproduction, had to meet each other, and then go through the most improbable process that is reproduction and fertilization, to give birth to the two of us. Then through many odds, we somehow sit next to each other at the right place at the right time, as strangers, spending two hours just talking to each other on that fateful day. Seeing things from this perspective, I cannot help but feel overwhelmed by how miraculous this meeting is in terms of the sheer numbers.
It's the days and the weeks and the months that I have been spending with her, and I don't remember any passing day that went by without me thinking about how easy it would have been for us to just sit there and stare at people in the crowd. And it is strange that I cannot remember how it was like before she came along, I just cannot. It is as if she came along and pressed the reset button or something, because I don't remember how long bus rides and late nights on the internet felt like any longer. She gave me a reason to look forward to things, motivated to work, and I feel invincible when she is around. It isn't just about the laughs and the silliness that we engage in every once in a while, because you can get that with anybody that gets along with you in a social circle. There is more to our social contract than the ones we sign with friends. It is that companionship that I feel with her that isn't felt with anybody in this world. It is that feeling you get when you know that there is someone out there who knows more about you than you, at times. The feeling you get when you know that somebody can read your mind, somehow. It is how we finish each others' sentences off in a conversation, or thinks of the very same thing at the very same time. Knowing that there is some kinda "spare copy" of myself out there vested in someone that I love, is comforting in a way that is difficult to explain.
She is like a constant reminder of what it should be like, you know, the way a post-it on a cork board reminds you of your daily to-dos. She reminds me to be thankful, to be grateful, to love. She reminds me of all the things that I felt in the past with a relationship and so much more, because she is a different person - a better person - than the one before. It is the concept of love that I feel with this special someone in my life, the way that everything becomes simpler with lesser knobs to turn. It is simple with her, because you don't have to be playing mind games or to manipulate someone. It isn't about being together for the sake of being together, but it's just the way that I feel with her, the fact that she gets me in more ways than one. With all things considered, she is perhaps the most miraculous thing that has ever happened to my life, as cheesy and cliche as that may sound. With every meeting that we have, be it one with each other or with friends, I can't help but realize that her presence justifies the claim that she is somewhat of a miracle in my life by all accounts.
To comprehend the fact that there is someone out there who is that in-line with your frequency, sharing a chemical reaction that is calm and yet explosive, to know that you have someone to take refuge in - it feels incredibly good. She overwhelms me, like the way the size of the universe does to you when you first read about it. She is like a warm blanket of summer wave crashing over me in mid-winter snow, and yet firm enough to hold on to when the storm gathers. Hey Neptina, I love you. You're my star.
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