The random world in which we live

FROM paper straws to the wild and weird weather we are experiencing, Dr Airdre Grant’s Veranda Talk column has it all

DR AIRDRE GRANT: ‘Where do all the umbrellas suddenly come from? They appear from the blue. Like green shopping bags or jars for drinks and soggy paper straws, suddenly they arrive.’

I GO into the shop and I say to the young woman behind the counter “it’s raining.”

“Yeah,” she replies. “Random.”

And that, friends, is the way it is.

We no longer know what to think about the weather.

When we find out its going to 28 degrees, we think phew, when there was time when we might have complained bitterly about the heat.

Now 28 degrees seems perfectly acceptable. Almost welcome.

As the young woman said, random.

In these days of fires and a government sending their best thoughts and prayers to help its difficult to make sense of anything.

For example, where do all the umbrellas suddenly come from? They appear from the blue. Like green shopping bags or jars for drinks and soggy paper straws, suddenly they arrive. Except umbrellas disappear just as quickly - it would seem we are stuck with the jar/straw thing.

It happens in culture and expression and is called the frequency illusion or Baader-Meinhof phenomenon and it means that something we have thought or discovered suddenly appears everywhere.

It turns up in language: think Netflix and chill, staying in your lane, OK boomer, polyamorous and woke.

Suddenly those words and phrases are everywhere. Random

I can only surmise that this is to remind us that magic and mystery still exist in our dusty little town.

We all need a wee bit of magic and mystery in our lives.

In these shifting times, mystery is about the only thing we can be sure of.

The political landscape is full of posturing and disagreement and the weather is fickle (although certainly getting hotter).

So, there you have it.

In these fickle times, mystery abounds.

The future is perilous and intriguing.

We have no choice but to go with it.

Best to love your mystifying and inexplicable life.

I take refuge in the words of renowned physicist Albert Einstein.

He said: ‘The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom the emotion is a stranger, and who can no longer pause to wonder and stand wrapped in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed.’

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