#20: The World As I Know It
finding sense in the entropy, fueled by a revisit to words by Wordsworth. take this as me imploring you to listen to Lola Young to find the thesis of this piece.
I’ve been reading Wordsworth lately — partly out of a strange nostalgia, and mostly because summer always makes me think of long weekends in the Lake District as a child. He wrote, “Life is divided into three terms — that which was, which is, and which will be. Let us learn from the past to profit by the present, and from the present to live better in the future.”
The world as I learned about it was never tidy. But I was taught that it could at least be coherent when it needed to be.
I was told that I’d grow up, keep educating myself, and acquire the skills of adulthood (I’m still trying to figure out what this means). More importantly, I internalised the idea that I’d not just move through, but try as best I can to improve systems, whether they “worked” or not. I was taught that the people around me would act in mostly rational ways. I was also told that while bad things might happen, they’d also be balanced by what we could ultimately deem “progress”: technological, moral, economic… maybe even social. The world I grew up learning about was rounded by the curves of history, lines that bent — slowly, unevenly — toward values like justice, equality, and joy.
While I continue to believe in all of these and more, the world I’ve been witnessing lately has taken several turns. In many ways, it’s still the world I learned about — chaotic and colourful but full of possibility. In others, it feels like it has contracted amnesia and that its inhabitants have forgotten their compasses. When did we start confusing cruelty with competence? When did we start treating childhood like a luxury, instead of a right? When did we stop flinching at the idea that some lives are seen as more expendable than others? I don’t have answers for you. But I know we can do better. And I know the externalities of inaction don’t just stay “out there.” They leak into everything — into how we build trust, how we define safety, how children learn what’s normal.
The world as I’ve seen it this year is one of broken timelines, overlapping crises, and leaders who traffic in chaos. The news has made time feel eerie — too fast, too slow, and fundamentally warped.
When I was 16, I made the disastrous error of thinking I could thrive in AP Physics. While I found centripetal force fun, I never quite understood Gauss’s law. So, I barely scraped by — but there’s one term I did master: entropy. This was also around the time I read The Death of Ivan Ilyich (#iykyk). I always thought of entropy as a theoretical concept, but the news of late has made it feel… biographical. To err is human, as we know all too well, and through it…we may just learn a lot more than we realise.
The map is buffering and I’m still here — trying to read the coordinates and make meaning out of, well, a mess.
Many days, I’m genuinely stitching a life together from mismatched threads. The WhatsApp chats that hold my relationships across at least seven time zones. The articles I bookmark and can never find again. The rituals that offer normalcy while I fumble and fuel a career trying to shape the world.
Tiny acts of coherence seem to matter most in times like these.
Case in point: the baby gecko I spotted at the gym this evening. It was small — barely noticeable — and clinging to the wall under one of the many TV screens flashing grim headlines from around the world. I’m not particularly terrified of geckos, but I wasn’t thrilled about handling it either. So I asked my trainer if he could help “escort” it out.
I kept repeating, “Just don’t hurt it, don’t kill it,” almost without thinking. There is so much malice in the world that I know I can’t stop, but this felt like one I could.
He brought over a towel, gently cooed the gecko onto it, and lifted it with surprising care — cradling it like a newborn. Then he walked it out to the nearby garden and released it. It reminded me that even amid the entropy, we can choose softness and a willingness to care.
That gecko, I’m sure, will find its way back into the gym. Just like I hope we all keep finding our way back to tenderness, to each other, to some version of a world that still matches the one we learned about growing up. I also acknowledge that maybe the world you learned about growing up doesn’t sound like mine at all. That also gives me solace because maybe in you traversing your world and me crossing mine, we will find a plateau in the middle on which to meet.
I’m human-sized, so I’m not trying to figure out the grand design. I live in the granular — in the meals I get to share, the cities I explore, the words I record in prose.
Some days, the smallest things make it bearable. A call from the person I love. A kind note from a colleague. A perfect cortado. A peachy sunset from my window. They might sound vapid, but they’re what make the world crack open just enough — to let the sense and the glow slip in.
The world as I know it is brittle and bizarre, brilliant and broken. I know it won’t offer clean conclusions. I’m not trying to “fix” it either. I know that’s not a cause I’m noble enough for. But I can choose not to be dissolved by it. I can make sense where I can — and when I can’t, I make space for it. This can feel both comforting and quietly radical. The largeness of the world has placed so many expectations on us. It’s one big system, if you choose to see it that way. I prefer to look at it as smaller ones that matter more when the larger threads fray.
I don’t want to pretend this is easy or always intuitive. Some days feel like emotional clutter. Some weeks, I’m angry, and for some months I feel like I’m underwater just trying to keep up with how quickly things change.
Still, I find a calm organisation in the disorder and a resolve to keep believing in the world I was raised to envision. I love people who live too far away. I start projects that may take me months to finish. I always get dessert and I seldom will choose to share the tiramisu. I overcompensate with the people I miss — too many texts — and underperform everywhere else in my WhatsApp inbox. This defiance is what drives me, it’s my way of reclaiming power in a world that often feels like it’s unravelling. After all, the paint’s been mixed. I never said I’d stay within the lines.
I keep trying to make sense of what I can. The rest I leave to entropy — and whatever grace can gather from its wake.