Mandelbrot Set The most beautiful structure I don’t understand.
I failed Calculus in the 11th grade. I never went to class.
I’m not convinced that would have changed anything. But because I never tried, I get to live with the comforting delusion that I might have understood it.
If I’d just shown up. Funny how you can’t fail if you don’t try. Not trying becomes its own logic.
It creates the illusion that possibility is safer than reality. Total cop-out.
The current version of me hates 11th-grade me for that. So here we are, decades later.
Grateful my gifts took me somewhere else. And grateful the world doesn’t only need mathematicians.
I spent the week in meetings, immersed in someone else’s world, talking about my favourite subjects: purpose, meaning, living and leading intentionally. And I hear all of this math.
Wait, what? I’m talking about human behaviour and identity and the stories we tell ourselves…
and he’s talking about equations.
Are we having two different conversations? Nope. Same world.
He’s seeing the patterns. I’m feeling them.
Which, inconveniently, is still math.
What he sees in numbers, I see in people. And it turns out we’re describing the same architecture.
Math is a language based on patterns. Human behaviour follows patterns too.
We mistake so much of our lives for chaos, but we’re actually inside systems.
Intentional living is pattern recognition.
Leadership is pattern interruption and pattern creation.
Connection is the emotional version of solving for X.
I see patterns too. I see them in people, in stories, in the choices we repeat and the ones we avoid.
Insight is what happens when a few of those patterns finally connect.
Strategy is what you build once you can see them clearly.
And intention? That’s choosing the pattern you want to live by.
This is the possibility open to any of us when we wake up in the morning.
So what changed for me this week? I now want to learn more about the natural order of things.
The system running underneath everything that seems random. And it definitely means chasing down some of the systems thinkers in the world and attempting to understand their language better.
Maybe some of them even have a children’s book version of their theories.
After all, wasn’t it Einstein who said: “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough”?
Thanks Dan Rogers, Darcy Johnson, Price Tsai and Heidi Powers for the gift of your attention.
New to One Thing Thursdays?
Each week, I share something I’m learning, living, or working out in real time. It’s part storytelling, part reflection. I hope there’s something in it for you too.
Get it straight to your inbox every Thursday! Subscribe to our newsletter
Mary
P.S. We help visionary leaders and organizations achieve more impact through purpose, engagement and storytelling. When you’re ready, here’s how we can help:
- Build the story of your impact through Envision OnPrpose™
- Energize your people’s potential from the inside out with Engage OnPrpose™
- Amplify your industry voice through Influence OnPrpose™
- Develop purpose-driven leaders and storytellers with Influential Leaders Circle™