Dear friend,

I wanted to write you a letter about the benefit of randomness, unpredictability, and chaos in our life.

Everything doesn’t need to be “in order”

In the West, we want everything to be orderly. We want organization, optimization, and efficiency. We want everything correctly labeled, categorized, and put in the “right spot”.

The sad thing is that in today’s world, we are told to become more and more like computers everyday. We want to “upgrade” ourselves, we want to constantly improve, and we have a fear of falling behind.

My idea is that we can’t always run according to the clock. Does time control us, or do we control our time? Can we wake up without being harassed by our alarms? Are we constantly checking the time, rather than checking whether we are doing what we want to? Are we trying to check more things off our Todo list, or are we trying to do more meaningful things?

Randomness is good

My suggestion: let us embrace more randomness in our lives.

For example in photography, I have found that my best photos come from the most unlikely spaces. Not only that, but being in random places often yields the best shots.

For example, a great photo can be in your bedroom, your living room, in your car, at the grocery store (waiting in line), or being bored at the bus stop.

Randomness means chaos. Chaos means that we never know when a good photo might present itself.

The solution? Use randomness to our advantage by always being ready. Like a good fisherman: we don’t always know if today we are going to catch a fish, but we can work hard and pay attention to our rods.

How can randomness help our photography?

I also find randomness can help our photography in other ways.

For example go to a bookstore and randomly look at the photography book section. Don’t go there with any idea in mind. Rather, keep your mind open, and simply be ready to find a random book that might inspire you.

When you are trying to edit and sequence a photography project, embrace randomness. Print your photos as small 4×6 inch prints, scatter them randomly on the ground, and see what random combinations come together. Sometimes the random combination of photos work better than your intentional pairing of images and ordering of images.

Embracing randomness is also going out to shoot without an idea in mind. Don’t think about your project idea, nor have a certain destination in mind.

Not only that, but follow your gut. If you drive, simply drive around town until you find a random place you’d like to start. The park your car, take your camera with you, and randomly explore the streets like a “flaneur” (someone who likes to walk and explore without a real destination in mind).

Another idea: jump on a subway or a bus, and go off at a random stop. Walk around, and document whatever you find interesting.

Randomness in life

Sometimes our big “aha” moments or moments of epiphany come totally randomly.

For example, you might gain inspiration by reading a random article in a magazine, a blog, or hear something interesting on the radio or TV. You might also get some great ideas by talking to a random stranger at the coffee shop, or at a party.

One thing I read of someone embracing randomness in their life was to set their homepage in their browser to a “random article” link in Wikipedia. He has learned a lot of random junk, but some random articles has sparked his imagination, and led him to having some novel ideas.

Another thing you can try: embrace the “I’m feeling lucky” button on Google. Sometimes embracing randomness is less stress for us and leads to interesting discoveries, and also pushes us outside our comfort zones.

I have a huge problem when going to restaurants. I hate the “tyranny of choice” (too many options of what to order stresses me out). Therefore what I do instead is often ask the server, “Just randomly give me whatever is your personal favorite.” Or the next time you go out for a drink, rather than ordering whatever you usually order, ask the bartender to “surprise you.” Sometimes the experts know better than you (another idea is ‘Omakase’ when you’re eating sushi; the Sushi chef sizes you up and gives you what he thinks you will like).

Some other (random) ideas

If you are the type of person who has too many cameras and lenses, rather than trying to make a “rational” decision which camera or lens to bring out that day, just take a random combination. Don’t think too much about it; just take any old camera and lens and go out and shoot. You might discover a novel combination you might have never expected to work.

When cooking, don’t just always follow recipes. Try random ingredients and spices. This is what helped me discover that cumin (what I thought you could only use on Indian food) and cinnamon (what I thought you could only use on breakfast foods) actually goes really well on pork ribs.

Go with the flow

Also with randomness, know that things will (often) not go according to plan. But that’s the point.

I feel being a human being isn’t to simply follow “copy and paste” rules in life, but to discover the truth for yourself. How can you discover what works best for you without trying random experiments, having new life experiences, and to meet random new people?

Even one of my best friends Kevin; I was randomly paired with him as a dorm roommate at our first year in college. On the outside we seem totally different: he was an introverted white guy, and I was a rambunctious extroverted Asian. He studied computer science, and I studied Sociology. If you asked me if you thought we would become best friends our freshman year, I’d think you were crazy. Yet this random pairing worked so well; we discovered that we shared a lot of similar passions together, and our differences opened one another’s minds, and also helped bring us together.

Think about it: what else randomly happened in your life, which defined who you are? How did you meet your life partner? How did you get your first job? How did your parents meet? Why did your parents decide what to name you?

There are so many things outside of our control. Let us try to be more adventurous and embrace more randomness in our photography and lifestyle. You never know what great journey lies around the corner for you.

Always,
Eric

5:53pm, May 25, 2016, typed on my smartphone on Evernote (randomly got inspired to write this)

Also for further reading on randomness, I highly recommend “Antifragile” by Nassim Taleb (one of my biggest influences)