The pace

Electricity is produced in power plants in different geographical location, however all power plants are connected to the same distribution network. You can think of a star that at each point has one power plant attached to it. At any single point of time, you wouldn't know who is providing your energy. It is coming from a synchronized network.

Synchronization is the key concept. Each plant should be synchronized to network frequency that is fifty herts, in other words, all power generator’s speed should be same, all throughout the network. The process of attaching a generator to a network is daunting, risky and yet interesting and mind provoking. I had the opportunity to be part of it few years ago.

The operator starts the generator at a very low speed, if a generator starts at high speed, all its internal circuitry will undergo a shock. It might not immediately fail, but in long run it will suffer from the shock. So they always limit start speed to protect the generator. It takes time, under controlled conditions, until generator reaches network speed and this is not even half of the trouble. Apparently, generator rotation speed is not fixed, it keeps on fluctuating up and down, after all it is a mechanical device and nothing is fixed in real world. At this point, operators wait until that fraction of second that generator speed matches exactly that of the network and then "click", it connects. From here after all that needs to be done is to maintain the speed. Interestingly, network will help to stabilize generator’s rotation speed and besides minor variations won’t cause the generator to fall off sync and be detached.

I had this conversation with my friend the other day about the pace of two people in a relation, and at that moment I was thinking of generators and syncing. The two concepts are so amazingly similar, that I though only if we knew ...

Firstly, no two person can have the same pace in life, unless miracles could actually happen. Anyways, the two people see the chance to click, so they start to get close, but apparently, the paces are different, if the slow one, takes a big step and rushes to keep pace, its internal emotions cannot cope up with the shock, and even if the damage is not immediate, in long run, the inrush emotional burst will create some imbalance. On the other hand, if the faster person starts t slow down then there is no reference pace to synchronize with. Both  sides start to fluctuate and then end up in resonating rather than synchronizing and that moment of click will not easily happen .

Interestingly though, if the two sides sync then it is easy to maintain it, small variations in pace will not be harmful, unless either sides makes a sudden pace change beyond tolerance of the situation and the two parties fall out of sync. Then they will need to restart the cycle again.

 Here is my dilemma, if this observation is correct, then one side has to keep its pace constant, stable and reliable. One side cannot even fluctuate around. Its fixed pace is detrimental to make ultimate sync possible. I’m sure in the world that I live in today, this is impossible. And I think that in older times, in the world dominated by men, they kept the pace and the women matched themselves and life went on smoothly. I am not in favor or advocate of such kind of life today, but I find it very challenging to synchronize two person’s pace efficiently in any other way.