The Meaning of Life?

Responses 1, 2, 3: Which Will You Choose?

In lieu of my second life birth as Alyosha Runner, a first bloody nose while playing ultimate frisbee, and finishing up my master’s thesis, I’ve been contemplating the meaning of life.  I doubt that I could have actually found THE meaning, but here’s an option.  You will certainly understand a LOT about me if you understand this:

Not-secret Formula to Living Life:
(notes (or disclaimers?): S/P=situation/problem, no complete solution is possible, suffering will almost surely be involved)
1. Search to find complex and worthwhile S/P (finding a complex one is easy, worthwhile is much more difficult-God, Others and Bayesian Statistics are recommended).
2. Search to find prior information about S/P (vocab, math, previous work).
3. Find others interested in understanding S/P; form a team if possible.
4. Get access to or develop sensing and analysis techniques to get basic facts about S/P.
5. Learn by exploring S/P (Use a basic (almost real-life, may be computational) or complex (real-life) example).
6. Learn by recognizing patterns in S/P as it occurs in real life.
7. Synthesize all analysis techniques into design methodology which accounts for uncertainty.
8. Design.
9. Produce design (ie: Live!).
10. Automate entire process and redo.
11. Share entire process with others (preferably done concurrently).
12. Repeat for new S/P
The point emerges:
The meaning of life=Shared Iterative Exploration.

A Note for Those in Other Fields or Potential Engineers:
I’m an engineer and likely to remain one, but there’s no need to be an engineer to live by this process. The job of an engineer just lets one do this for their livelihood with others who desire to also!

A Resultant Note for Managers:
Pigeonholes will be systematically and categorically rejected.  Try as you might, I will not become a stick-brain to simply create cogs.  Nor will I treat others as if they are simple parts of a machine except when my self-centeredness prevails.  I often do not go through this process systematically due to the fact that I am human.  Spontaneity is required to catch wind gusts. This is one reason why step 10 is so necessary.

Is running away really necessary?

A Note to Hedonists, Realists and Skeptics:
Insightful readers might note a similarity to the conclusion of “Into the Wild” (happiness is only real when shared).  I make no claims about happiness or reality being involved; some have said that death and taxes are the only guarantees and, for me, they are probably right; we’ll see for any children I have.  I do have a sneaking suspicion that Solomon was right in Ecclesiastes: the meaning is not given by the resulting product.  None-the-less, please refuse to give up you hopes and dreams; on the contrary, enlarge them and share them!

A Note to You
I stand on many the shoulders of many others and hope to let others stand on mine.  I urge you readers to consider who you’re sharing life with and if you’re using your freedom to explore.  If you aren’t, I might argue you’re dead already. Go live; you can do it!

Changing and Developing Life Values

I haven’t updated in a long time, so here’s the newsletter for 2008.  I’m not planning on expanding this blog much since I’m planning on developing communities around my Ornithopters Blog, Ornithopters Network, UFLMAE Network and Hawthorne Reserve Network.   However, I do hope to keep a record of what was going on with me personally so in 30 years I and/or my family can remember (inspiration: Marley and Me).

Me and Uncle Terry in San Francisco for TechCrunch

Me in Times Square

Shelley and I Snowboarding in NC

"Fighting" with Laura

The last year+ has certainly flown by, perhaps partially because I’m studying flapping wings at the University of Florida.  As I turn 25, I’ll complete my masters work in Spring ‘09 and finish a Ph.D. about 2 years later.  Every year when I look back I can’t believe how much I’ve done-I thought this year moved slowly!  While based in Gainesville FL, I was privileged to travel to North Carolina to teach Shelley to snowboard, NY city to tour/visit Laura at her ballet intensive, San Francisco to see my uncle/attend TechCrunch courtesy of Mint.com (conference for internet-based startup companies), and Memphis TN to see the family for Christmas.  Traveling always seems to be enlightening as one explores new places and meets new people.

Flapping wings sometimes make me go cross-eyed!

Since I like to travel so much, I was surprised by a rocky transition from Auburn to Florida for graduate school.  I don’t remember being so unsettled by change-I guess I’m getting older or something!  Just as I thought I had gotten my identity worked out at Auburn, life threw some curveballs.  I struggled to just conceptually grasp the material in my classes and barely survived my first semester of grad school.  Since then I’ve passed doctoral qualifiers and presented my first technical paper, so I’m on track, but the road is still bumpy.  I bought a townhome, which was awesome, but since the houses around me haven’t sold, I often feel stuck with a “bad” financial decision.  I also went from a place where I was valued based on my reputation to having to start over with relationships, academic reputation, athletic reputation etc.  As a result, over the last year I’ve reworked through who I am, who I want to become and tried to clarify what I want to do with my life.  I sometimes worry that I am not becoming who I want to be, but I remember that I am choosing this path, and that most days I am exactly where I want to be.  I don’t yet have a final answer for what gets me out of bed every morning, but I have at least two values to live by in the meantime: (1) wanting to wake up and choose to trust/believe that God exists, and (2) desiring to learn about and demonstrate my last name to those around me.  I have been struggling with the first since about 2 years ago when I first realized that my brain could not absolutely comprehend truth.  While this leaves room for faith and enables freedom to exist, it is a very disconcerting conclusion for someone who craves certainty.  Regarding the second, I long to love and be loved, but I am still learning how to accept and express love.

UF-B "High Level" Ultimate Frisbee Team

Halloween: Derek Guffin, Katie Gareau, Robert Love, Sandra Pryor, Anthony Koffman

So what activities am I still doing after this refocus?  Some vestiges of my past carried through.  After a year off, I am now playing ultimate Frisbee 3+times per week with the UF-B team.  Combined with riding my bike 3 miles into school each day I stay in decent shape, although I can’t remember the last time I played tennis.  I enjoyed teaching an introduction to engineering class for 13 talented 11^th and 12^th graders over the summer.  Relationally/spiritually I’ve tied in with a group that is loosely called B2G.  This group of young professionals is trying to learn about what it means to live in a community which fully realizes how transient and often shallow our relationships are but, despite that realization and our multitudinous differences, wants to engage in each other’s lives.  Some of us worked through the book “Soul Talk” by Larry Crabb to sharpen our listening skills and experiment with trying to see others struggles and envision who they would become if they desired to know and reflect God instead of just wanting to receive God’s blessings.  I’ve also enjoyed a bunch of movies this year, but my top 10 favorites were: The Dark Knight, Bolt, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Iron Man, Marley and Me, Frost vs. Nixon, Taken, Wall-E, Revolutionary Road, and Slumdog Millionaire in that order.

Vinayaka Ca, Linda Fernandes, Erik Sanders, Chiquita Kerur, Robert Love, Pin Wu

Robert Love, Brian Roberts, Sanketh Bhat

Roommates: Robert Love, Can Sakirgil, Matthew Zeeb

While many of the activities above are “for fun”, they also are shaping me into who I will become.   To be more active in this shaping process, I’ve decided to specify 2-4 areas of focus for each year where I will dive into those worlds for 3-6 months in addition to schoolwork.  Last year I chose to (1) become an adept internet user (esp. organizing community and bringing together information through RSS feeds-see links above), and (2) obtain the necessary background to be an entrepreneur.  Over the next year I anticipate pursuing (1) prevention of sexual exploitation/trafficking of people, (2) an entrepreneurial venture (perhaps the idea my group examined last semester: a web-based service that develops and organizes prize competitions to enable employers to recruit students better) or possibly (3) leveraging online tools to help bring together my neighbors/coworkers, (4) learning Chinese, (5) developing a 3D camera system or (6) starting to invest actively.  We’ll see!

The Love Family-Everyone's on Facebook Except Mom!

I earnestly hope that through the coming year and the rest of your life you will not be like a hummingbird flapping hard just to stay in the same place, but instead you will use your talents and abilities to perform spins, loops, dives and maneuvers of all types that leave everyone around you changed for the better.  While it often seems we are going nowhere, I stubbornly cling to a hope that there is such a thing as progress.  Therefore I’ll leave you with this: doubt, apathy, and inactivity are a result of an unwillingness or inability to see all the variables, but one with a trusting faith acts boldly or waits patiently regardless.  I urge you to either act boldly or wait patiently as we continue on throughout this next year of our lives!