Chaos.
It is a quintessential attribute of life, the universe, and everything.
I don’t handle it very well, though. In fact, it’s my number one source of anxiety. I need to control things. That is not to say that I have dictatorial leanings, but rather, I mean that I need to plan, I need the comfort of routine, and I need a modicum of assurance that if I work hard enough and provide enough due diligence, I can keep myself out of harm’s way.
Life has taught me that ain’t always so.
As is usually the case, a series of unrelated experiences has me dwelling on the reality of chaos and my own unbridled anxiety.
A particularly brilliant student of mine wrote the following: “There, in life, are two instances where a man morphs and never returns to his previous state; the first, where he learns what fear is and finds what frightens him, and the second, where what he fears becomes him.”
Wow. So true. I’ve never been the same since learning what fear is.
Yesterday, I was reading a lit review in the Times about biographies of Joan Didion. It of course featured her famous quote: “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.” However, one writer argued that this isn’t the chipper boost for storytelling that might at first appear. Rather, it means we impose narratives onto our lives, regardless of accuracy, as “bulwark against chaos, against meaninglessness.”
This then collided with a show I watched on Discovery for mindless diversion. It’s called, of all things, “Lost Monster Files.” In it, a bunch of hip-looking thirtysomethings chase after the case files of the late cryptozoologist, Ivan T. Sanderson. This particular episode featured a search for the legendary thunderbird. They found the nesting area of a large raptor, and scraped the place for DNA. It came back as being most likely an eagle’s nest, but there was something else unknown in the sample.
“So it doesn’t prove that it’s *not* a thunderbird,” the young woman on the show said.
Wow, I thought. She really needs this. For whatever reason, she really needs for there to be an as yet undiscovered species of massive bird, possibly a throwback to the paleo era, flying in the skies of America. She needs that narrative to give her order.
Or is it chaos? The discovery of a thunderbird would upend a good bit of our understanding of the natural world. That would be chaos.
There is an election anon. Many who believe that our current institutions have stopped working seek a similar “creative chaos” (as they see it) in tearing everything down to replace it with something else. What do I think?
I’ve voted. I’ve donated to my chosen candidate. And that is utterly all that I can do. I have no control over what comes next or what people will do. All I can do is try to manage my anxiety for next 24, 48, 72 hours, or God knows how long, because everything is completely out of my hands.
And that’s the part that never sits well with me.
