Connections

Niels Bohr discovered that, once subatomic particles such as electrons or photons are in contact, they remain aware of and forever influenced by one another instantaneously and for no apparent reason, over any time and any distance, despite the absence of force or energy, the usual things that physicists understand are necessary for one thing to affect something else.

Why do living things, and perhaps we humans in particular, have lifelong need to connect? Why are we so delighted when little snippets of conversation and encounter have us skipping like magpies between one field of exploration after another? Well, these are rhetorical questions, of course. And mine is the sort of free-ranging poetic mind that is largely content to allow questions simply to exist – without much urge for instant or definitive answer. But I know that connections (not all of them necessarily social connections; I am, after all, a bit of an introvert) – matter to me, and that I have a somehow ‘unlearned’ capacity for remembering countless numbers of them across a lifetime. And so I merely want to drop a place marker here, a note for goodness knows how many future conversations and contemplation; a delighted, awed, ‘wow’ upon having read of Niels Bohr’s discovery detailed above … ‘forever influenced by one another instantaneously and for no apparent reason, over any time and any distance, despite the absence of force or energy.’ This living business, in this Universe, reveals itself constantly as ever more extra-ordinary and – even for flibbertigibbet magpies – everlastingly exciting!