On a really, really cold day in Ithaca, New York I made some Korean soup. As a Korean man the soup warms up my soul more than the body and boy did I relish it. But on that day I just couldn’t get warm fast enough, and I remember eating so fast the roof of my mouth had a scathing burn.
(But to be honest with you, this happens more times than I’d like to admit)
When I call to my wife from the other room while she’s drying her hair, it’s practically impossible for her to hear me. My dogs bark a lot, but thankfully they’re both small so the sound doesn’t rumble but instead dissipates. Their barking doesn’t wake up my neighbors.
When I’m trying to throw my partner in judo, I use all the power available to me but even that’s not enough to throw someone bigger than me. I have to use momentum to aid me to compensate for the strength I don’t have. Our shower drains have a hair filter on it so it catches the hair that falls during the shower.
If you’re reading until now, this seems like the most random string of facts and you might be wondering what the fuck I’m on. But what I really want to talk about in this writing is consistently in all the above paragraphs: I want to talk about entropy.
Entropy is a concept originating from the laws of thermodynamics so perhaps the simplest way to show it is through thermodynamics. Fire is obviously super hot, but when the fire is used to heat up the pan the pan absorbs the heat but at the same time some of the fire’s heat is dissipated to the surrounding air.
The pan gets hot and you put your butter and asparagus in, but some of the heat is lost to the air and a portion of the total heat in the pan is transferred to the asparagus. The asparagus is nicely cooked and as soon as it’s lifted up to be plated its heat is dissipated to the plate and the air. By the time you actually eat the asparagus, it only contains a fraction of the heat of the fire.
I wanted to get warm with the soup but because my body was already so cold that one bowl of soup wasn’t enough to get me warm (hot enough to burn my mouth though!). When I call my wife sound dissipates immediately after it leaves my vocal cords. My dogs barking dissipates immediately and it is further dampened by walls.
Why this is important for you today is, the same phenomenon happens with your intentions. Suppose I want people to subscribe to my writings. The moment this intention leaves my fingers, it’s already a lot less than my pure intentions inside of me.
How can the simple words “Subscribe to my writings” encompass the entire feeling of wanting you to experience the Buddha’s dharma through daily digestible writings so you can eventually completely remove suffering from your life? But even this paragraph isn’t enough to fully communicate why I want you to subscribe.
And that’s just my side of the whole exchange. When you read my words, you don’t really read my intentions; you just read whatever you interpret it to be. You can take it as “this fucking guy commanding me to do something” or “meh why not?”. I have no control and influence over how you will take my words.
It’s so easy to understand this concept of intentional entropy when you break it down like this. But when it comes to communicating with other people, are we really mindful of how our intentions lose power at every step of the way of communication?
When we want our spouse clean up after they clip their nails, how much of the pure intention are we explaining to our spouse? When we want our kid to wash their hands before eating, how much of the pure intention are we explaining to our kid?
We keep going along the lines of “I’ve already told you multiple times!”, without taking into account that multiple times is probably not enough to get a glimpse of the message across.
To counteract entropy we can do certain things, like funneling the energy with a pathway or simply repeating the intention multiple times. When I throw a heavy partner in judo I use their entropy along with mine to make an explosive throw. When I collect hair in the shower I let the water drain as it lets the hair also flow with it.
It’s not that our message isn’t working or nobody cares about what we think. It’s way more likely that your message and expression of intentions are simply being washed away by the phenomenon of entropy.
Knowing this, how do you want to consciously communicate your intentions? What do you want other people to know?
P.S. Last June around this time I made the decision to write every day. It’s been a year of writing every day and when I decided to make this switch, I thought I would have zero subscribers by now. Every day I’m pleasantly surprised that people stick around for daily writings like this, and I wanted to thank you for your support.
