I try to make sense out of the nonsensical.
I’m weird that way.
Looking for patterns where no patterns go.
Let me explain:
The digital clock shows 5:38 twice every time the earth completes a full turn.
I see this number so often I wonder what message could God be trying to send me.
I’ve checked various verses of the bible to see if there is a chapter 5, verse 38 that may resonate.
The closest is Mathew 5, verse 38: “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,” where Jesus denounces the Old Testament on revenge.

I’ve heard chaos is a series of patterns yet to be discovered.
I don’t know the 5:38 message, but I take comfort in being told something.

In science, Occam’s razor states the simple answer has a higher probability of accuracy than the complex one.
I look at the clock so often that it would be hard not to notice 5:38. And when I see it, I wonder about the magical message.
Regardless, I don’t like Occam.
I prefer to appreciate magic without knowing how the tricks are done.
To think like Occam is pragmatic and boring.

Here’s another example of the nonsensical.
I was sitting in “The Eye of the Storm”, at Wizard Academy in March 2016.
Yes, I said that right: Wizard Academy.
It’s a school where Roy H. Williams and his gang of troublemakers teach eager students about the art of persuasion, creative ad writing, art, and general misfitery.
36 people were in the room with 21 laptops.
The laptops were all Macs.
Not one PC amongst them.
Something’s not right, I whispered to my wife Aline.
She knows I question stupid stuff all the time, so she sluffed it off to let me dig into my curiosity.

Apple holds 12% of the world market in laptop computers.
Yet 100% of the laptops in that room were Macs.
To my knowledge, the Wizard of Ads has never publicly endorsed the Apple computer company.

This was chaotic.
No pattern visibly existed, with the exception that all in the room were learning from the Wizard of Ads.
But why wasn’t one of the 21 laptops a different brand?
Everybody wore different brands of shoes, pants, and glasses.
Yet all the computers were the same brand.
Occam would say that ad people love great brands, so these people buy a great brand of computer.
I think Occam’s wrong on this one.
Why weren’t they all wearing Nike’s or Chuck Taylor’s?

Researching corporate values and beliefs, I stumbled on a video of Steve Jobs from 1997. Here’s the transcript of the “Think different” campaign.

Here’s to the crazy ones.
The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers.
The round pegs in the square holes.
The ones who see things differently.
They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo.
You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them.
About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things.
They push the human race forward.
And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius.
Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.

21 Apple laptops weren’t purchased because we were at Wizard Academy.
21 Apple laptops were purchased because we were the misfits Apple marketed to 20 years earlier.
We were the rebels who believed we could change the world.
We went to Wizard Academy to learn how to do it.
After seeing that 1997 video, I’m certain of the round pegs’ motivation.
People who believe in the same things like to hang out together.
Some call that friendship.
Others call it tribes.
The 21 laptop nonsense finally made sense.
A company marketed its beliefs to the world.
20 years later, a bunch of misfits happened to be together in a room learning how to do the same thing for their businesses.
That’s the power in sharing your beliefs.

Now I have to figure out why the clock keeps blinking at 5:38…

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