THE LIFE CHAOTIC
We humans like to believe we can channel the commotion and mold it into something more palatable, but our control of the chaos is superficial at best.
Life is not linear and smooth like queuing up for a kissing booth. No. It's chaotic and messy like a perfectly executed cannonball into a crowded pool: its impact is felt everywhere, people get doused in its aftermath, babies are crying, children run screaming, the lifeguard blows their whistle with angry futility.
It's absolute mayhem.
And it's glorious!
Life is chaotic. It has no rhyme or reason. There is no drumbeat that it marches to. There is no metronome to keep it in line. It’s a screaming, flailing, uncontrollable shit show.
Sure, some aspects of life are more orderly. The sun usually rises in the East and normally sets in the West. The tides move in and out. Seasons… happen. But even these seemingly hard and true actualities are, at their core, chaotic. The sun burns hydrogen atoms in a wicked, bubbling process that spews gas all over the universe (it’s like a cannonball). The moon sloshes the tides haphazardly around the globe. The seasons are caused by the earth being tipped on its axis as it orbits the sun, spinning and wobbling like a top about to fall over.
Everything that happens around you is absolute chaos. The wind swirls. Birds swoop. People turn the wrong way down a one way street. The weatherman says it is going to be sunny and you find yourself having a picnic in the rain. It’s all chaos, baby!
INFINITE POSSIBILITIES
The awesome thing about all this chaos is it makes almost anything possible: there is a man about to get on a train in a station in Czechia; there is a dog sniffing the breeze in Cameroon; there is a flower struggling to grow in the crack of a sidewalk in Sydney; someone, somewhere, just opened a soup can.
This is a very big world we live in. At any moment - any moment - almost anything you can think of is probably happening. Somewhere. This planet is literally buzzing with activity. You can almost hear it hum.
There is a quote I love from Marcus Aurelius (I like it so much it is tattooed on my person):
Vex not thy spirit at the course of things; it heeds not thy vexation. How ludicrous and outlandish is astonishment at anything that may happen in life.
It means: in a world of infinite possibilities, it’s rather silly to be surprised by anything. You’re probably thinking, “Thanks, Dan. You could’ve said that earlier and saved us all a bunch of time.”
To wit I’d say, “Vex not thy spirit…”
IT’S NOT ABOUT YOU
We will, oftentimes, react to the chaos as if it is happening specifically to us. As if the swirling mess of the world is directing itself on you and you alone. You will lift your arms to the sky and ask, “Why me?”
A tree branch falls on your car - “why me?”
You step ankle deep in a puddle - “why me?”
A bird aims perfectly for your shoulder - “why me?”
The chaos does not happen “to” you. Chaos happens. Whatever chaos happens around you isn’t about you. It is just the way things work. Exclaiming “Why me?” to anything that happens doesn’t change what happened.
Life happens, you just happen to be there. You know, “vex not” and all that jazz.
We humans like to believe we can make order out of this mess - that we can channel the commotion and mold it into something more palatable. We build sailboats, erect bridges, invent calendars and schedule events, but our control of the chaos is superficial at best.
The most we can do is react to chaos as a common occurrence. We are aware that the wind swirls, that birds swoop, that people make mistakes, that weathermen are sometimes (oftentimes?) wrong. We can, should, and do adapt to predictable chaos.
Do not be troubled by the chaos. The chaos will happen regardless of your reaction. You know, “vex not” and all that jazz.