Random arcs
Today during my walk I continued listening to Barack Obama's new book, read by himself. Two hours in, what I have heard so far is the story of a rather unremarkable youth with few accomplishments and no purpose. Not until his mid-twenties, when he got involved in community organizing, did things begin to fall in place. From there on, his unique combination of assets perfectly fit the political moment, and he rose like a meteor.
I have also been struck recently by the arc of the life of another person of color, as told in the documentary Time. Desperate for cash to support their clothing retail business, a woman and her husband try to rob a bank.
We follow the woman’s life, mainly through her video diary. She serves time in prison, then builds a successful business career, while carrying on a thriving role as an activist in her community. She remains fiercely faithful to her husband, while he serves out his own twenty year prison term.
Meanwhile she raises two capable and promising twin sons, whom she was carrying when she robbed the bank. We meet one of the sons at the end of the documentary. He's handsome, articulate and persuasive, an activist hoping to dedicate his life to prison reform.
What strikes me about these life stories is how utterly unpredictable their outcomes were at the start. No-one meeting the eighteen year old Obama would have predicted his time in the Oval Office. Nor was there even the slightest indication that the son of the twenty-four-year-old owner of a hip hop clothing store would hold such promise as an activist for prison reform..
On my walk I’m struck by the lovey randomness of the geometric patterns I see. They're complex, myriad, commonplace, and strikingly beautiful - not unlike so many of the patterns in the arcs of our lives.
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