Everyday Musings > How random is that

I love random things. The kind that plop into your life when you least expect and fill it with something new and interesting. Much of my life has been built on random decisions and it’s been a delightful pick.

Merriam Webster says being random is taking a haphazard course, without definite aim, direction, rule, or method. Wikipedia adds that randomness is a lack of order, purpose, cause or predictability. Aristotle is said to have defined it as a situation where a choice is to be made which has no logical component by which to determine or make the choice. The term is also often used by statisticians to mean lack of bias or correlation.

Random selection forms the basis of Tarot card readers, teen-patti players, lottery buyers and so on. Things that to us seem mystical and magical and out of our control. And thus provide much excitement of stepping into the unknown by trying them out. Websites like randomwebsite.com and stumbleupon.com makes it interesting to experiment on randomness on the internet, where exploration can lead you to places/people/thoughts you didn’t know existed.

Allthetests.com had a random test on randomness. Questions were something like this. Have you ever worn a ballerina outfit to the mall? Have you stolen an aged piece of garbage? Have you gotten mad at a tree? Do you lick the table on Wednesday? Do you own a planner? Have you annoyed a butterfly? Have you befriended a mailbox? Do you enjoy staring at the wall? Am I scaring you? Do you speak Italian? Can I have your t-shirt? Does Riley own a cow with band aids attached? Have you ever done a dare? Do you have an unnatural fear of staplers? Have you told a stranger that you loved them? Have you skipped dinner? Have you ever been to a gas station to drink an ice tea? Do you hate cockroaches? Do you hate cockroaches? Have you ever travelled to a country just to take a picture? Are you mad at your eyes? According to the test I am sort of random. Hmm ballerina outfit eh.

Sometimes we meet people that things just seem to happen to. And they lead the wonderful lives we’d love to lead. Probably because they are living random. Loving the idea of random I’ve realised means being open to life and everything in it. It means letting oneself be curious, experimental, hopeful, non-judgmental and welcoming. No matter what one encounters, one embraces it and makes it part of one’s life, no matter how strange, icky, weird it might seem. All the explorers and experimenters are definitely lovers of the random.

Living random scares many of us. It’s the phobia of the unknown, of not knowing what to expect. So many of us lead lives which lead to expected results and rue that the unexpected never happens to us. No surprises, no magical events, no wonderful things that just happened out of the blue.

I wonder if we could experiment with random, even if for just a day in the week. Say Wednesday is random day, and we do random things, make random decisions. What would it be like? Uninhibited, mad, crazy, constantly surprised...it would be like being a child again.But then again, guess the idea is to open yourself up to the randomness of life. It wouldn't be random if you planned random, would it?