CHAOS. In college, someone I used to know said something to me along the lines of “it doesn’t always have to be this chaotic,” and I remember laughing it off with “but I like the chaos.” I think I liked it because I couldn’t imagine a day with space to breathe, to be or a few moments to myself without an agenda of what I had to do and where I had to be when (queue some thoughts in my previous post on BEING — I thought about combining the two, but I like how these themes are separate and also intertwined). I do think some chaos may always be part of life — that there are always things to do, people to see and variables that make it all a bit messy. Change is constant and there’s going to be uncertainty. But for the most part, I don’t want the chaos anymore — I don’t want the kind of chaos I can work to control for myself. I don’t want a million things going on at once, overwhelmed that I can’t keep up with myself, my commitments and all that’s around me. I don’t want to feel like I am always being pulled in another direction, giving less attention than deserved to what’s in front of me.

I also think there is the chaos that exists in our minds — when we can’t seem to quiet our thoughts, fears and anxieties. Sometimes we have so many; the feelings and emotions overwhelm us to the point that we don’t know how to process or even admit them. Trying to reduce this chatter, the emotional tension and fiction, can ease some of that chaos — as much as we would rather not admit, sometimes we create it for ourselves. How do we unwind the chaos? Besides sitting with our own emotional states, we can think about who we actually want to spend our time with. What are the commitments you currently have — to yourself, your interests, your friends, your job? When you’re bothered or upset about something, how do you cope? Releasing the weight of the chaos creates space for what we want.

I don’t have kids yet so I certainly recognize I don’t have the constant need (or stress) to attend to them — I’ll have to cross that bridge one day, but that aside, I think it’s worth asking ourselves how can we cultivate lives that aren’t full of chaos all the time? There will always be things out of my control, but I want my days to be full of the people and interests that fill my cup, and yet not so many that I can’t be present to who and what is around me. My schedule is much less chaotic than it used to be — I have more time for friends and myself and yet, I have many days that I still find myself on the go until the minute I rest my head and thoughts continually nagging at me. We only have so much time and energy — constant chaos drains that for us.  

Maybe some thrive in chaos, but sometimes I wonder if we actually want to do something or if we do it because it will please someone else. Or do we use the chaos as an excuse to not acknowledge something else. I think it’s taken chaos to know how much I can crave the calm — to be able to listen to my own thoughts in a world that is so loud (social media, Manhattan, and work can all drown that out if we let it). I want to walk through life calmly and present to what surrounds me, even if there may always be a little chaos that keeps us sane. It’s figuring out the kind of chaos we’re okay with.

Book Recommendation:

This book doesn’t correlate to the theme of chaos, but it’s one I read earlier this year – The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell by Robert Dugoni. A novel about a boy born with red eyes and his journey becoming an ophthalmologist, following decades of bullying and ridicule from being the kid with “devil eyes.” It makes you ache, but the story of resilience filled me with a certain kind of hope and compassion — leaving you believing in the character deeply.