In modern thinking, Entropy (the Second Law of Thermodynamics) suggests that all systems move toward disorder. This is both a physical law and an existential metaphor of life, identity, and the inevitable decay of civilizations. The universe itself could be moving by Dark Energy toward an irreversible dissolution of order, pushing the cosmos apart, moving entities and systems further away from each other.

 

This interplay of uncertainty, immutability, and entropy sits at the heart of human existential thought, metaphysics, and even thermodynamics as a metaphor for life. The entropy in our civilizations, the impact of technologies on our daily lives, the redefinition of old countries and the shifting world of geopolitics is playing out just as the laws of physics describe. These entanglements create a precarious existence and an uncertain future. As individuals, families and societies; this is a time when we feel ANGST.

 

Heraclitus famously stated, "No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river, and he’s not the same man." Perhaps we like to think that things and our lives are immutable, but our reality is an ever-changing, dynamic process—flux—where uncertainty is the only certainty. Everything flows; nothing remains still …. this is the only immutable truth, the law of change itself, within the constant of transformation.

 

If Heraclitus' flux is the river of change, then entropy is the is the force that determines our inevitable course, an irreversible march toward decay.

 

Liminality has now become my “threshold of being”, my personal world of ambiguity and uncertainty. I can embrace change, I can honour the past, but I must face the in-between state where order dissolves but recognizing that a new form of me and my world is in a perpetual state of emergence – until I can emerge no more.

 

This is my rite of passage, where I am is no longer the person who I was, but not yet who I might become. This is my human condition, more than ever, I am adrift in uncertainty, confronting the abyss, yet never fully collapsing into it. I am existing in a paradox, bound by entropy, suspended in liminality, resisting flux while being subject to it. Uncertainty and immutability are the two sides of my existence in today’s world.