Entropy
I’ve been thinking about entropy recently—the second law of thermodynamics states that a system naturally tends toward disorder. To keep a system at the same level of order, you have to put energy into it. And even worse, to increase the order of a system, you have to put in more energy than is required just to maintain it.
This feels like something worth being cognizant of in the new year.
Here’s an example: I’m single, I live in a house that I own, and I live alone. If I don’t put energy into household things—cleaning, laundry, dishes—if I just live my life at steady state, then the house tends toward disorder. Clothes end up on the ground. Dishes end up unwashed. You have to put energy into the system just to maintain the same amount of order. And if you want to increase orderliness, you have to put in even more energy—more time than you normally would cleaning, doing laundry, and so on.
I think this principle applies broadly.
Take relationships. You might expect that if you’re not putting energy in, your relationships would at least maintain the same level of closeness, friendship, connection. But that’s not true. If you don’t put energy in, they tend toward disorder. You have to put energy in just to maintain.
I have a feeling this extends to other domains too.
Now, this isn’t to say that your life needs to be entirely ordered. There are good reasons for chaos—for disorder—in life.
The example I think of is annealing metal. When you want to anneal a metal sheet, the chemical structure is so rigid that the energy function won’t allow you to bend it. So you heat it up. The heat allows you to reshape those ions into different configurations. It’s analogous to being stuck in a local minimum on an energy surface—when you heat things up, it perturbs your state and allows you to escape that minimum.
Sometimes in life, you’re in a local minimum. Sometimes you don’t realize it. Sometimes you do, but it’s too difficult to get out with your normal tools.
You may have to inject some randomness.
I’ve seen this manifest for people in different ways. A spontaneous vacation that brings a new level of inspiration, motivation, appreciation for the world and other people. Watching a new movie—which really does inject randomness into your life, because the director and the characters are offering you a perspective and a story that you can interpret, in some sense, as random.
Sometimes disorder is exactly what you need.