This is random

Page 156: This is a Random Adventure

First off I'd like to say that my sisters and mom think that I say the word random a lot. Apparently I always think things are random. I personally don't notice it that much ... but I think that in general, I just find life's happenings random.

Webster's Online Dictionary of Random: Lacking a definite plan, purpose, or pattern.

As much as we try to make sense out of things ... as much as we try to find reason behind why people do things, why people feel things, how our blood flows, why the grass is green ... I truly and honestly feel like its all just random! It's just how life is.

Even if you have a plan for your day; a purpose of going to school to get a degree; or a pattern of waking up at 8am every morning ... everything that happens around these plans, purposes, and patterns is still random. You can plan to do things in your day, but the day will happen and play itself out randomly and you have no control over it. For example, you can plan to go to the gym at 2, but you can't plan that today running on the treadmill will feel slightly harder than it did yesterday and that your shoelace comes untied at mile 1.7 and a drop of sweet is falling perfectly at the tip of your nose, and you don't see anyone at the gym today even though you ran into 3 people there yesterday .... I think that all of these things are random. No matter how hard you try, you could never plan to have that exact same experience again.

I suppose that others (including my mom and my sisters) would just say that these things are normal. And I do too. They are normal. They're things that happen in life. And I think life is random. So that's why I say it a lot.

Moving onnnnn... like I said page 156 is a Random Adventure. At first glance I would say that this is not actually random because I am doing this adventure because the book told me to (a purpose) and I did exactly what it told me to do (the plan): I went outside, walked until I saw something red, took ten steps from that location, and looked down at my feet to describe what I see.

However the adventure itself is still random. Because I don't know what is going to happen here. As much as you try to stick to a plan, you can never predict what will happen along the way.

So as I stuck to this plan, my right iPod earphone randomly fell out.
I randomly sniffed.
And a few random cars drove by.
I have no idea why, I don't know the purpose for any of that happening, and I didn't plan on any of it happening.

Then when I reached my ten steps after the red street sign ... I saw a random crack in the sidewalk. It was pretty big. The crack spread all the way from the left to the right side of the sidewalk. The left side of crack was wider than the right. The shape was random. Its direction was random. It wasn't straight or smooth .... just a big old crack. Right in the middle of where I was trying to walk.

Isn't it kind of random that EXACTLY 10 steps led me to step on this crack? I think it is. I wasn't even a centimeter over or under. I didn't lengthen my stride or take baby steps. I just walked 10 steps and randomly stepped on this big crack.

And in my head, I just thought to myself, "yeah...I would step on a crack right now." Life is full of cracks. Bumps. Holes. Life is full of ruts that get in the way of your path.
And I can't plan on when they will come. I can't rationalize a purpose as to why they are there. And I don't show any patterns as to how I deal with them when they come or how I can avoid them in the future...

These cracks and bumps and holes in life just come randomly.
And then randomly, I decided that I had enough time dwelling on this crack in the sidewalk, and I continued walking.
I can't predict when I will decide to walk away from the cracks in life, because I can't plan on anything in life. But just as random as they come to me, they will randomly leave somehow...