Your chance to shine with tangled Xmas-tree lights
This week a thoughtful, handsome (1), thin (2) man communicated with me from the past. This great human reached forward across 10 full months and made my life easier.
That person was me. His gift was rolling up the Christmas tree lights so they were easy to put up. A year ago, he could have thrown them in the decorations box in a big ball. He could have let entropy have its way. Instead, he did the right thing and wrapped them around a piece of card with some slits in it.
Entropy is defined as the measurement of degree of randomness, or, in other words, it is the increase in the disorganisation within a system. Your lights will tend to tangle if energy isn’t applied to stop them doing so. Hugh Hunt, professor of engineering dynamics and vibration at Cambridge University, put it this way in a 2017 interview with
There’s one organised way to have your lights, there are many ways to have them in a disorganised way. The odds are, that they’re not going to stay organised for long unless you take enormous steps to make sure they do.
The universe doesn’t care if your lights end up in a horrible screwedup, unsolvable mess. It’s all the same to the cosmos. The only entity with an emotional investment in the state of those lights is your future self. The one who has to untangle them.
Our past selves are often good to us. Maybe they did the shopping so there is something in the fridge to eat. They might have worked hard to get a house, so you have a roof over your head. Perhaps they ordered a bunch of socks and jocks a year ago, so you can put something comfortable and hole-free on in the morning.
When I am 65, I look forward to thanking my past self for setting up and paying into my KiwiSaver. In two months time when I have a six-pack, huge pecs and tight buns I’ll look back and thank myself for finally getting around to signing up for the gym next week or the week after.
Sometimes, however, our past selves do terrible things to us. Mine’s been eating a lot and has left me with a fat gut to deal with.
He also failed to stretch his Achilles before playing tennis, and now I have a Haglund deformity sticking out the back of my foot. Then there’s the drinking.
A friend of Irish descent sent me a note left by a sober guy named Steve to his drunk self. It was written on a pad and left on his duvet. It read: “To drunk Steve, Please drink this bottle of water before bed, then you can have the chicken wings in the fridge, Hungover Steve will thank you. Love from Sober Steve.”
When he got home that night drunk, Steve replied at the bottom of the note: “F*** you, Sober Steve. I do what I want. PS tell hungover Steve he’s a little b****.”
Back in my heavy drinking days I woke up to a painting in my bed. A tasteful piece of art depicting a bird, a fish and a rabbit served up on a country table for lunch titled surf, turf and sky. There was a badly scribbled note on the back reading, “Morning loser, I used our money card to buy this piece of crap. Enjoy.”
If done rashly, credit cards and loans can attack you from behind.
Sometimes your past self buys stupid things you have to pay off for years.
I am thinking of a friend of mine who has an unfinished hire-purchase agreement on a jet ski. He used it once three years ago. It’s currently sitting under a pile of crap in his garage. You know who you are.
Whole nations can do similar things to their futures. Our grandkids will likely wave the middle finger back through time over the mountain of debt the Government has run up over the last two years.
When your tree comes down early next year, why not roll up your lights and put them away nicely? It’s the least you could do for yourself.
(1) My mum thinks I’m handsome.
(2) I was in the positive phase of my yo-yo dieting at the time of the Christmas light rolling.
Listen to Matt Heath on the Radio Hauraki Breakfast.
6am-9am weekdays.