couples bicker. parents "get into it" with their kids. "you always say that!" "you never let me do anything!" "you never tell me anything!" "late again? why can't you call!"
we get into ruts. a rut: the image is of a limited path, not immobile but constrained. in his book chaos , james gleick describes the strange attractor, a mathematical notion of a type of pattern than emerges in the generation of certain number sets. the numbers seem random at first, but when there are enough of them, they cluster around points and lines, which are said to "attract" them. the mathematics of these patterns is called fractal geometry; and it turns out that quite a few objects in nature look like fractals and behave like strange attractors.
a planet circling the sun does not follow the exact same orbit each year. the circle or ellipse varies ever so slightly, yet the planet is "in orbit," no snowflake is exactly the same, yet a snowflake is easily recognizable. no human face is exactly the same; yet a baby will smile at photo of a human face. rivers look like rivers; mountains look like mountains; clouds look like clouds. it is as if, under certain conditions, freezing water is strangely attracted by the rough notion of "snowflake."
if a rocket is fired at the right velocity and angle, it goes into orbit - attracted, as it were, by orbiting. if a man "pushes his wife's buttons," they fight. it is predictable, as if this fight were a strange attractor. don't get too close or you'll fall in.
a depressed young man, treated with antidepressants and psychotherapy, feels better. his work and relationships go well. but occasionally he still has thoughts of suicide. no plans; he's not worried about the thoughts. rather, he's intrigued. "what does it mean that i think, 'maybe i should kill myself?' shouldn't i try to understand these thoughts?" well, what happens to you if you follow those thoughts. "i get more of them." well, then i'd recommend for your consideration that, as they say, you don't go there.
a characteristic of strange attractors, of chaos in nature, is that a pattern is likely to continue until broken. after which, the odds go back to random. one example is weather. a string of 3 sunny days does increase the chance that the 4th day will be sunny. if the 4th day is rainy, the odds on the 5th day's weather are back to the average for that month and place.
so, if a chaos/strange attractor model holds, it does make sense to take a break after bickering for hours if the fighting has become repetitive. break the pattern. and once out of the fight, be careful. don't go there; watch out for the strange attractor; you can fall back in.
2 weeks later the young man pauses to mention, "you know those thoughts of suicide? i haven't had them again."
(image from http://www.math.utah.edu/~pa/math/mandelbrot/mandelbrot.html)
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