My life is a fractal. A geometric abomination. A monstrosity of mathematics. Fractal patterns define our universe, and every subsequent universe that it contains. The one in your backyard, the one in your phone, and the one in my head.
My mind is like a menger sponge. My thoughts fractals of themselves. Never finishing yet never quite beginning either. My self doubt and my insecurity an endless sequence of corridors in a cube that hide corridors in a cube that lead to corridors in a cube containing corridors in a cube.
Sometimes, I don’t know how I manage to make sense of any of it. It is an infinity so large and ironic that one struggles no longer in finding the end, but in finding the beginning. A foolish idea that if one finds where infinity begins, one can find their way out. But when life comes to a certain point, it has already been too long.
Down to the point where one sperm cell was chosen out of a million, the life of that person has already become so infinitely complex and incomprehensible, they resemble a fractal pattern long before they ever resemble a human being. It has been so long, that to turn back might mean never finding the way forward again. Where the difference between progress and regression becomes so minute that they are one and the same in all but truth; a distinction that is, at that point, virtually redundant.
The people around me appear as triangles of Sierpinski: two dimensional, without depth, perspective, and as far as I may know, without life. Yet endless, all the same. Complex in their mystery to me. Those I know, however, those whom I am of acquaintance, they are of three dimensions. As comprehensive as myself. I know the machinations of these people, for I see their depth. I see through their endless cycle of strife; the fractals on the pores of their skin, and the geometry of their emotions. I understand all this, because I experience it with them.
These are the people to whom I give the time of my day. The fractal patterns that I zoom in on endlessly, the ones that I study and the ones that I admire and despise. These people complete me, these people form my endless abyss of geometry, just as I form theirs. There are, doubtless, things that I do not comprehend about other people. Who did these people wish they were? Who do they think they are? What have they been through, the finer constituents of their existence. These details I fill in with my own knowledge. I fill in the gaps of what I do not know with that which I do, creating a being of them in my head that no one has met but me. These people are not to me what they are to themselves. Nor am I to them what I am to myself.
Sometimes, I wonder what it would be like if I were to meet the version of myself everyone sees me as. I wonder what I would think of him. What would he think of me? Would I hate him? Envy him? Would I understand him at all? Or would I simply regard him as a completely different being. Would it change the way I behave? The way I think? Would it ever be capable of that? Would I? Such questions drive a man to do the wildest of things.
The universe we live in, however, holds many questions far more significant, to be answered. Our universe is like the Mandelbrot sequence. The strange shape on the graph, that perfectly exemplifies the chaotic nature of our reality with unyielding order. A pattern endless, unpredictable, wild, and completely incredible in its design, so much so, that it could make an agnostic such as myself consider deeply the possibility of god.
Like our universe, the fractal patterns that would occur when one zooms into the Mandelbrot set will differ wildly, dependent on where particularly it is magnified. The smallest difference or slight in the point of convergence will result in wildly differing patterns, a factor of increase that compounds exponentially the deeper the augmentation. Fractal patterns, that branch into hundreds of possible sub patterns, each one with their own hundred patterns, and so on and so forth. This creates the possibility of literally endless fractals, infinite sequences of shapes and shades that are as limited as the processing capabilities of it’s host CPU.
However, there exist black sections of this odd shape that lead into nothing. Just as our vast expanding universe materializes the greatest of space to fit nothing. Empty, incomprehensibly vast velds of mass and void. Nothing among it but clusters of clusters of clusters of stars and dust. Dust that we happened to be a part of. The mere thought of it illustrates our insignificance in this reality. As the Mandelbrot sequence proceeds, it becomes an increasing series of concentric circles, with the density of that concentricity increasing with the magnification of that set, until it is nothing more than a mesmerizing series of cyclical shade layered upon cyclical shade, one after the other in a perfect equilibrium of succession. Our universe is much like it: vast, beautiful, unpredictable, never ending; but with one final destination.
We are all fractals. That which is inside of us represents a surface we can see but never quite touch. Those whom are around us represent the infinities that are as meaningless as they are endless, with lives that only we understand, because we are the only ones to observe them. And finally, the universe in which we are sustained is created on this same principle of impartiality. It does not care what it does or how it does it, it just does until beauty, until life, occurs of its own accord.
Such, is the nature of our existence.
A life of fractals, of endless patterns and cubes and triangles.
And it’s beautiful.
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