Combination

This random word generator exercise is stretching the brain. Each time I write for the blog I get my random word and then write a short piece based on it.

Today’s is ‘combination’. Yep. Good one huh? Starting with a piece of original fiction I will attempt to explore ‘combination’.

Dressed entirely in black, moving with catlike agility and military precision, the team of shadowy figures descended on the vault door. Imposingly robust, the door was an impressive and threatening testament to man’s ingenuity; its design and size injected a sense of hopelessness and fear into would be assailants. The only way that the team was penetrating this barrier was with the combination; a luxury they didn’t possess. However, within their team they had an unwilling participant; shackled, out of breath and paralysed by fear was the key to the door’s puzzle. Albert Koelsher was the man who had designed the vault door: the only man alive who knew how to penetrate it.

This is how I remember the heist tales of my youth – before high tech gadgetry, military weaponry and superhuman strength got in the way. Safecrackers, working against an imaginary clock, sweat pouring off their brows, attempting to crack the combination. That final click, the sounds of metal cogs turning and steel doors opening – the sounds of success and relief.

People often comment on whether another person has the right combination of skills, attributes, knowledge etc. It is this combination which some feel is the key to success, power, prosperity and popularity. Aristotle once said, “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts” or words to that effect. I this is so then the combination of a person’s attributes is not as important as the person themselves – however I feel the combination of the parts is the essence of the person. “We are but a sum of our life’s experiences” is another quote I enjoy and this speaks to the importance of combination. I think that Aristotle may be a little off the mark when applying his theory to humans.

Combination is also widely used in Asian food. Most of us would have experienced the westernised version of Chinese food – infused with MSG and vegetable gums so that each dish is very similar to the next – meat with gluggy sauce and rice. One of these bastardised dishes is the ‘combination’ dish, seemingly a mish-mash of last night’s ingredients  - the Asian bubble and squeak. I am sure this was not the original intention, and revered Chinese chefs would be sick to the stomach, but in Australian Chinese restaurants this is a dish to miss.

People are forever searching for the right combination – food, art, design, sport, attributes, love, work; combinations form the basis for our society. Without combinations it would be a sterile environment indeed.