Routers: A Reason and A Rhyme

What if you had to consciously be aware of every single bit of data to function properly? What if you had to calculate the mechanics of making your heart pump, or the secretions within your eye ducts, or the balance necessary to take a step?  Who thinks about the efforts to perform such tasks, except when something isn’t working properly?  The information needed for these actions is obviously routed and managed appropriately, or we wouldn’t get anything accomplished. We are left to make the conscious calculations of deciding what’s for dinner, where to park, or whether to go to war.

The focus on routing information is interesting, not so much that I needed a higher capacity router to stream Netflix, but the idea of our conscious intake of information.  When I’m really working on a project everything in my periphery becomes muted and my focus is highlighted. The spotlight is center stage.  I don’t hear the hum of noises in the house, or pay attention to time.  The space appears to shift and become more acute.  There are other times when my senses seem to extend beyond what I know to be practical and real. The extra data falls just outside the traditional framework, but is still a part of the picture.

Before I get carried away with my thoughts, here’s the definition according to TechTarget.com.  “A router is a device that forwards data packets along networks.  The router is connected to at least two networks and decides which way to send each information packet based on its current understanding of the state of the networks it is connected to.”

I believe routers function like personal belief systems. “The current understanding of the state of the networks” fits perfectly with my analogy.   How many times have you encountered a situation with another person only to have had very different assessments of the experience?  Too many times, I’m sure.  Belief systems route packets of information in certain directions.  A simple example would be watching a movie with someone.   By watching the same movie with the same impacting “data,” I’ll often have a different take on characters and outcomes.  Again, this is an innocuous example, but think of more significant circumstances: deciding medical procedures, changing jobs, starting a family, or going to war.  The data is virtually data, until it falls into a belief that arouses emotion.

I am glad I don’t have to calculate to know all the reasons for things.  But, I do want to have beliefs that are big enough, bold enough, and that bend enough to sense the rhyme within
all things.

The Search goes on. Join me.