Embracing Chaos

To embrace "is to accept or support (a belief, theory, or change) willingly and enthusiastically" .

Chaos is "complete disorder and confusion" .

My entire life has been strolled with accidents. I am the most clumsy and absent minded person that I know. I pay attention to things like keeping the dangerous chemicals on a high shelf and filling up the gas tank before a long trip, but all the little things I thought were irrelevant in my life just add up to chaos. The things I see some people have a total break down over, I cant help but unsympathetically laugh about. It's not right, yes I know, but it's because I've been in that chaos for awhile. I will do something, anything, and just shake it off now and clean up the mess while someone near by is frantic. Spilled milk right?

But then I learned about thing thing called chaos theory (more of a physics thing which i am not good with) - the study of small changes that were made to completely transform the future of some system or event, in relative mind - the butterfly effect.

For example (at least from my understanding)-

i. Initial Condition: In 1880 a young woman needs to go to the market for some carrots

ii. causes: woman meets a handsome young gentleman working at the register

iii. causes: man and woman soon marry

iv. causes: the couple have a son and name him Johnston

v. causes: Johnston grows and has a beautiful life as a writer

vi. triggers: Douglas Fairbanks to adapt his books into a movie

vii. causes: Martha and Bruce Wayne to take their son to see The Mark of Zorro

viii. causes: Martha and Bruce to be killed by a robber on the way home

ix. triggers: anger to grow in the heart of a young boy

x. causes: BATMAN

Now, firstly, I did too much research for this scenario, but alas, this is a "study" of, right? Also, it's not public knowledge I've come to find who Johnston's parents were and if she was even out for carrots, but there was some almost microscopic daily life event to cause such a dynamic event in a geek nation.

Another darker scenario could take from you leaving your coffee at the end of coffee table and it resulting in the death of a young family. Can you connect the little chaotic dots to each other?

Now, learning of this theory it made me frantic of the little messes I made and things I broke and on and on. Me, pulling a Kevin (The Office fans?), and spilling a large crock pot of chili is going to result in the destruction of the United States. No, but yes, but no, but yes? How can you embrace it all in the not knowing?

Chaos is a result of order. We embrace order do we not? We crave and even give up some of our most valuable assets and rights for it, or at least have. We embrace a well thought out calendar in which events are to happen as we bid them.

Ordo Ab Chao - Order out of Chaos, most commonly used to outline the creation of "dis-order" so that a price will be paid to create order. Another question, as if there isn't ever enough, is it worth the price that we pay? Especially considering that out of every bit of order chaos is created into an Ouroboros of life and death and the chaos in between to cycle in and out forever. So in making the payment for order, we are just setting up for another bit of chaos to inevitably ensue. If I'm using any of this wrong, correct me, I'd like to learn more and these are mostly ramblings anyways.

Order is needed indeed otherwise we wouldn't have some of the specatularities that we do have today. But what makes embracing chaos so important? We have no other choice! It WILL happen and in the most unforeseen instances and you WILL have to deal with it.

Alan Watts said, "Chaos is always losing, but never defeated." Now think about that. What can you gain from loss to prevent it from turning into a defeat? The knowledge on how to prevent further loss. The stories you can now create. You were not defeated if you accept the rise the chaos gave you. The laugh that leaves your lungs as you stepped on that damn Lego for the 12th time today, because dang-it, my chaotic self refused to acknowledge picking it up earlier and kicking it out of the way most the day, it just set me up to step on it in a different part of the house. Maybe I wouldn't have laughed or smiled the rest of the day if that didn't happen. I find that as an embrace of my chaotic self.

Chaos is this mountain, okay? We're all on this dark mountain and say, at the top there is the brightest of all bright lights and as you make your way closer to the top even assuming you never make it all the way, you still catch glimpses and bits of that light, increasing illumination as you make your way higher. The chaos mountain gets edgier, steeper, and it gets harder to breath with more height, but the light is worth it is it not?

With hardship comes positive light in places you never would think to see it. This is why I sit still now when something happens that is tragic and the person next to me is frantic running in circles, it's useless in the chaos. You need a level of darkness to really comprehend the light and vice versa. We need the chaos to have the order and the order will always come with the chaos. It's not negotiable. So in choosing to embrace (the light part) the chaos (the dark part) you charge through it with the knowledge and acceptance that it was needed and too shall pass.

No need to be sullen and sit there at the base of the mountain because the chaos on the way is too hard, you'd never find the light.

So, to embrace the chaos is to understand the all-ness that you are and need to be. To embrace it all is to understand the yin and the yang of the universe.