Chaos

Just when I think there is order to my life, chaos overtakes it and spins it out of my control. 

Try as I may to impose cohesiveness, things have a tendency to fall apart. It’s as if nature abhors order and delights in bringing chaos to the fore. I resist chaos because it usually means that I will lose what I have: control, certainty, and continuity. 

I need organization, predictability, and stability in order to feel safe and sound; composed and balanced. But when I least expect it, chaos surprises me with disorganization, disruption, and sometimes destruction. Like a hurricane, chaos moves into my life upending all that is in its path, leaving in shambles what I worked so hard to build. Then I am forced to pick up the pieces and begin anew. 

Even as I ask rhetorically, “Why must there be chaos in life?” the answer comes, “Because without chaos there is no life.” It was from a dark, disorganized, discombobulated void that the universe was born; and it is from an unformed, unpredictable, random occurrence that we are born. In fact, chaos is an integral part of the life and death process. It is a law of nature that order comes from chaos and chaos comes from order. Chaos and order are interdependent and one cannot exist without the other. Without chaos in my life the dynamic of creation ceases and life becomes static, dry, and one dimensional.

Life is in constant flux. It arises, flourishes, then dies back and disintegrates. The same happens to order. It’s as if order had a seed of chaos built into it and eventually self-destructs. And chaos seems to have a seed of order built into it because, as if by magic, order begins to emulate from the chaotic rubble. This is the dance of life. 

In the aftermath of chaos, I am sadder, but perhaps a little wiser. Chaos teaches me the difficult lessons about the impermanence of all things, and about the Phoenix that rises from the ashes. But perhaps the hardest lesson it teaches me is that, ultimately, I am not in control.

With this understanding, perhaps I can stop resisting chaos and accept it as a natural law. Perhaps I can welcome the opportunities it brings for new creativity, new order, and new life.