Living with the Randomness of Life

“Life cannot be calculated. That’s the big mistake our civilization made. We never accepted that randomness is not a mistake in the equation — it is part of the equation.” (Jeanette Winterson)

There are disappointments in adulthood when some of those teachings of childhood turn out not to be true.

Like, we eventually learn that imperfection is forever present in life. There are no “streets paved with gold” awaiting us in heaven. Success is not merely about money.

Early on in my soon-to-be 78 years, I had a moment when I thought life was as predictable as the rising and setting of the sun.

I was a part-time sports writer in my junior and senior years of high school for a 15,000 circulation daily newspaper, the Owosso Argus-Press in Michigan.

My journalism career morphed over time from sports writing to general assignment reporting. Reporters doubled as photographers back in those days so I took my turn being “on call” when the Sheriff’s Department would phone in the middle of the night to report a fatal accident on some country road. I would grab the big camera with the strobe flash and show up for the photo (after the body was removed). Usually car-crash photos ended up on page one the next day.

My mentor was Art Klein, the pensive managing editor who kept a cup of coffee on his desk covered with a piece of paper to sort of keep it warm as he decided what stories belonged on page one, laid out the page in pencil on dummy paper, and wrote headlines.

Art was complicated, sometimes mercurial, and not a man of many words. He was most comfortable as a member of the Argus bowling team that was composed of blue-collar guys like Scrib and Smitty in the pressroom. He also played golf at the Owosso Country Club where every summer the bald spot on his head turned a dark tan. Hard to imagine Art mixing it up much with the upscale members of our community — but who knows?

I worked at the newspaper while earning a bachelor’s degree at the local college. Then, I left for two years to earn a master’s degree in journalism at Michigan State University.

Art hired me back as Assistant Managing Editor and continued to mentor me. I thought that the rest of my life would be as predictable as the rising and setting of the sun. Someday, Art would retire. I would move up to the Managing Editor job, make an enormous salary like $10,000 per year, and own a house up on the tree-covered Oliver Street in the well-to-do Central School District.

That never happened. It was not in my nature to stay put. During the next 40-some years I was drawn away from the newsroom to the publisher’s office where I traded enterprise reporting for managing the enterprise, finishing the last 19 years of my career at the Washington Post Company, far from my Michigan hometown.

I looked around my world and change was ever-present. The more awareness that entered my life, the greater was my understanding of imperfections and recognition that the path of becoming a better person was an endless pursuit.

My religious journey shifted from that “obsession with sin” that was part of my fundamentalist youth to an “obsession with love” in the spiritual sense and a God who is knowable but not as predictable as those early beliefs. Turns out, the deeper life is cultivated, not programmed and we are to seek heaven on earth.

Success in business did have financial rewards. If you can grow a business, usually you can make good money in this world. But, it is a truism as old as the ages that money is not the ultimate measurement of success or happiness. Indeed, there is no higher reward than finding meaning and purpose in your work — and in your life.

That path of success, if you do find it, is not as predictable as the rising and setting of the sun. We would like to think that we can control events in our lives; that we are masters of our fate. But, reality is that you must learn to live with the surprising and sometimes chaotic randomness of life. You will experience mountaintops and valleys, joys and sorrows, confidence and doubt, respect and vilification, and resilience and vulnerability.

For most of us, little in our lives will look like what we dreamed about in those days when we set about on our journeys. It might be better. It might be worse.

But, one thing is certain. Despite all the randomness, the possibility of finding meaning and purpose in life never goes away. Never. It is as alive as you want it to be in every waking day. And, it is as predictable as the rising and setting of the sun.