{"id":236,"date":"2008-01-23T00:02:16","date_gmt":"2008-01-23T00:02:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dev.gregbueno.com\/wp\/sakufu\/2008\/01\/23\/inevitable_disc\/"},"modified":"2008-01-23T00:02:16","modified_gmt":"2008-01-23T00:02:16","slug":"inevitable_disc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregbueno.com\/sakufu\/2008\/01\/23\/inevitable_disc\/","title":{"rendered":"Inevitable discovery"},"content":{"rendered":"

Inevitable discovery<\/a><\/em> is a term I learned from watching too much Law & Order<\/em>. Although the concept has a specific definition in legal circles, there’s an underlying idea that I guess could be analogous to the notion of fate.<\/p>\n

If a set of circumstances would have prevented an outcome from happening, could it still eventually happen through the normal course of events?<\/p>\n

Today, I am a web developer at a technology company. I became a web developer because I saw limited opportunities at my former newspaper job. I ended up at the paper because of an internship program to which I was accepted after college. I applied for the internship because I was confident my experience with the college daily paper prepared me. I worked at the paper because I was encouraged to pursue journalism as a course of study. I studied journalism because a number of people saw I had a talent for it.<\/p>\n

One of those people was Robin J. Gould. She taught the first journalism course I took in college. She served as adviser for the student newspaper during the two years I was working as desk editor. She was, in short, my rabbi. (Another term I learned from Law & Order<\/em>.) We lived through a lot of bullshit bureaucratic drama, thus developing a kinship based as much on survival as common interest.<\/p>\n

She passed away in the last few weeks.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

There are people you met who alter the course of your lives. I had dreams of being a composer, but my disenchantment with my music studies led me to journalism. RG, as she was known by her friends, was one such influence.<\/p>\n

So it has me thinking about inevitable discovery. If the chain of events that happened in the wake of my meeting RG never happened, would I end up at the same place in some surreptitious manner? If I think about too deeply, I might start pondering quantum mechanics and string theory, which I am ill-equipped to do.<\/p>\n

The fact is I am where I am because RG tipped me in that direction.<\/p>\n

If inevitable discovery is part of human nature, it makes me wonder about the young people — her future students — who had yet to meet RG and the direction their lives might have taken. Who would take on that role now that she is gone?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If a set of circumstances would have prevented an outcome from happening, could it still eventually happen through the normal course of events?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-236","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-vital-signs"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4Bkjq-3O","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregbueno.com\/sakufu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregbueno.com\/sakufu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregbueno.com\/sakufu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregbueno.com\/sakufu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregbueno.com\/sakufu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=236"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gregbueno.com\/sakufu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregbueno.com\/sakufu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregbueno.com\/sakufu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregbueno.com\/sakufu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}