Time, doughnuts, and realizations

“Time has little to do with infinity and jelly doughnuts”. 

This quotation has always meant something to me. It is from the title of the first episode of the last season of Magnum P.I., “Infinity and Jelly Doughnuts”. This is the episode picking up from the season 7 season finale where Magnum gets shot and almost killed. When he awakes from his coma, he utters the phrase, “Time has little to do with infinity and jelly doughnuts”. 

I first saw this episode when I was a kid. It baffled me. I was so brilliantly curious by the quotation. I didn’t understand it. I still don’t. I like to believe it means that infinity seems so vast and great to us but it’s really just as insignificant as a jelly doughnut, which opens up so many questions. But then what does time have to do with it? Apparently, little. I always feel like I am on the verge of wrapping my head around this phrase and it escapes me. 

Now it could just be a crackpot quotation and means nothing, or it could be over my head and understood my a smarter man. But I find that my fascination with that line explains so much about myself, even if the meaning isn’t entirely clear. The fact that I can obsess over ten potentially meaningless words shows, at least to me, that the pursuit of knowledge is that paramount. 

I feel the need to Google everything I don’t understand, and yes I have tried that approach with this quotation. I couldn’t find an answer. No message board explaining to me what I wanted to hear. No article I could reference to find clarity. I was wonderfully lost. 

Although I still do not fully understand what these words mean, I do know it means something and has taught me more about myself. If only to discover a question that Google can’t answer. This conundrum I face has taught me more about myself than a quote I can truly relate to and understand. What more can you ask of ten words?

 I have spent my whole life trying to be grounded through facts and meaningless trivia to help keep me grounded in the world I have become accustomed to. The truth, is I need to not figure out what this quote means. I think it’s unintended lesson was to teach me that I can’t define every little thing. As much as it irritates me, I need to find peace in not knowing. Because if I don’t know something, well that just leaves a potential for so much more to discover.