Chaos

What is order but the perception of structure, of seeing a system, and the affirmation of seemingly indisputable laws underpinning these structures and systems, discoverable through the sciences, mathematics, and careful observation of the natural world? Order as such might be seen as synonymous with existence, and perhaps for this reason Greek cosmogony believed in chaos (kháos) as the antecedent to everything, the void that eventually gave birth to atoms, stars, planets, beings, and all things known and knowable. If by instinct we fear the unknown, the strange, the other, then chaos would surely reign supreme as the queen of terror, master of mayhem, and archenemy of the ordered world. But we are not xenophobes only, thankfully. We are also curious (and complicated). And we are all too quickly undone by the machinations of our routines, systems, and structures. As much as they help us, and console us, we desire a dash of the dangerous, too, a little flirtation with the unfamiliar, even the playfulness of unpredictability to purposefully upend our lives here and there, lest we become enslaved by the very systems we incessantly craft and seek. Should we frame this desire for disorder as taboo? Perhaps, more positively, we simply crave a touch of divine mischief from time to time, not unlike the madness of love, but with the childlike joy of messiness more than passion a part of chaos’ essence calling to us from its eccentric core. An unplanned day can be hell, and, sometimes, an unexpected treat. A wrench in the plan can spell disaster, and, sometimes, create new possibilities never to be otherwise realized and relished. Clarity of identity can be a confidence we covet, and, sometimes, the confusion of self-forgetting with a willingness to start again what we actually need. We do well at times to release ourselves to randomness. Chaos is order’s complement, friend and not only foe, very much already aswirl in our lives anyway whether we welcome the whirlwind or not.