The Goldilocks Principle

It's been a bit quiet around here these last few weeks; as spring finally arrives along with the pink cherry blossoms and yellow wind storms. For the month of April I've been out of town more than in, and on the road more than off. It really makes me appreciate coming home to even the simplest little heatless room with my Tibetan prayer flags and pictures of friends and family. This month so far, among others, I've been to China's Ice Capital (Harbin) as well as it's Coal Capital (Taiyuan); one of which had a museum dedicated to torture and the other to oil. Suffice it to say, my brief stints back to Beijing as of late have been blissfully boring and if it weren't for getting to look forward to seeing friends in Wuhan over these next 4 days away, I might just need a jolt (Red Bull China-style would do).
Are you getting a sense from my tone I am a bit melancholy? I don't mean to imply life is sucking - in fact, it is quite the opposite - but I guess I am doing what might only be expected of me in a situation such as this: where one detaches oneself from something prematurely in order to make it easier later on.
(That was a little trick us writers like to call foreshadowing)

I keep a diary beside my bed. Sometimes in the middle of the night I wake up with a sentence or two in my head, which to me at the time seems profound enough to wake me up; something I or someone in a dream has said to me, and I roll over and reach for this red diary with it's cute green pen attached and I write whatever it is down. Often I wake up having completely forgotten my RAOG (Random Act Of Genius) only to find some unidentified brilliance scribbled in a middle page months later. Other times I remember the dream and subsequent jot during the following afternoon while out for a walk and quickly hurry back in anticipation, only to find that the scribble literally is just that, and I can't make out a single thing I'd written down while half asleep and in the dark the night prior.
I came across this diary last night while packing and had a brief breeze through it; only to find a few tid bits that were not only relevant to my current situation but also made me smile and thus I felt possibly worth sharing.



"The secret to being happy is not to expect too much out of life."


"Brilliance or genius are merely others' opinions. The secret is to find another who thinks you are more brilliant than you are. That is the essence of a best friend. In seeing you for better than you are they not only create the possibility of it in your own mind and motivate you to be such, but also put that energy into the universe therefore forcing it to happen over time anyways."


"Destiny: when that which is avoidable still remains inevitable."


"Every phase in life serves to prepare us for the next. There are no wasted moments - no need for regrets."


"What should I do?" she begs, with tears in her eyes. "Well," he replies, in earnest, a full decade younger and foot shorter,  "I guess you should do whatever it is that allows you to reach your highest potential."




Over the last few months I've been torn with feeling I need to make some decisions. What has bothered me most is the knowledge that it isn't really up to me anyways. Something else out there: Gaia, The Universe, god, Buddha, destiny, Mohamed...  whatever you want to call that-thing-that-controls-our-fate, "they"'ve already got it planned out for me.  But I must like to torture myself so I spent some time (to extremely under-exaggerate) throwing around the "Bali, Bordeaux, Beijing or London" balls in my head. And every afternoon, like clockwork, as the calming feminine Yin energy of the morning switched over to the stronger and more energetic manly Yang, I began to worry, and tried to think of a plan.

So what would/could/should it be?  I felt a little like Goldilocks, but unarmed with the knowledge of what it was I really felt. Why can't my heart have heat sensors like my tongue or pain sensors like my back? Too hot? too cold? Too big? Too soft? Too this? Too that? I don't know! Ugh! Now I am tired. I wanna sleep. Mmmm, sleep. Oh jeeze now there are bears in my room!

The Story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears
Once upon a time, there was a little girl named Goldilocks.  She  went for a walk in the forest.  Pretty soon, she came upon a house.  She knocked and, when no one answered, she walked right in.
At the table in the kitchen, there were three bowls of porridge. Goldilocks was hungry.  She tasted the porridge from the first bowl.
"This porridge is too hot!" she exclaimed.
So, she tasted the porridge from the second bowl.
"This porridge is too cold," she said
So, she tasted the last bowl of porridge.
"Ahhh, this porridge is just right," she said happily and she ate it all up......


Now, just to add a bit of science geeky stuff to this quite artsy and Yin post, The Goldilocks Principle describes a situation, which is just right in a manner akin to that portrayed in the tale. The concept prevails not only in literature, but also in astronomy and economics. For example, a Goldilocks planet is neither too close to nor too far from a star to rule out life, while a Goldilocks economy describes one which is sustaining moderate growth and low inflation, which is seen as allowing for a market friendly monetary policy. The girl in the tale chooses the porridge that is neither too hot nor too cold; the chair that is neither too big nor too small; and finally the bed that is neither too hard nor too soft.


But only if it were that easy - where one was one extreme - another the other extreme - and the third was just right - or exactly what I wanted and needed and just knew based on how it felt. Why can't it be like that?!? Well, hindsight is 20-20, or so they say. And it turns out it really is that easy. Sometimes you have to just do that little thing called waiting that I am not so good at.


Beijing is too cold and too hard and too big... 

Bali is too hot, too soft and too small.....









And it turns out, that Bordeaux is just right.



She said happily, and she ate it all up.