The poets talk about life as a journey. But that just makes me wonder – in what space are we traveling? What metric can we use to assess distances? What sort of path-finding algorithm should we use? Will there be a giant ball of metaphorical twine along the way?
When I was asked to write a bit about my journey, I figured it would be easy; I’m the world’s leading expert after all. However, after several attempts, I could never get it to fit into any sort of particularly compelling narrative. It felt like a just-so tale; there was a chronology of events, and plenty of the usual milestones, but nothing that made for an interesting story.
But then I took a look around at where I was, and where I had come from, and I thought “Hang on. Just how exactly did I get here from there?” And so I started to wonder if maybe what was remarkable was that the changes had seemed so unremarkable as they happened. Because when I looked along particular dimensions, I realized I had gone pretty far.
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