Look around you into other cars when driving home on a Friday afternoon. More often than not, what you see bears testament to a city defeated ... - dark faces, visible fatigue and bland stares whose culinary equivalent would be potato broth with no salt.
Urban living, for lack of a prettier descriptor, demands nothing less than everything ... and gainful employment, many times, lacks real inner gain. Work begins early, slows down very late and ultimately never stops. It involves manifesting nebulous concepts such as customer centricity, service excellence and process reengineering. It is about delivering first time, on time, every time. Mistakes, God forbid, are not allowed.
More often than not, chaos reigns supreme.
Chaos (noun) – disorder, confusion, pandemonium, anarchy, disorganization ...
Sound familiar? Feel normal? Describes at least a healthy chunk of your life? Well ... s h i t happens and science acknowledges this. Our lives are always in chaos – not just when we feel they are. What's more, new science suggests that an individual and collective understanding of Chaos may dramatically change our lives. How? Through finally acknowledging that control is at best limited, that forced order is not necessarily sanity, that one small action can become amplified within the whole - thus bringing about massive results - and that planning can sometimes go completely and magnificently wrong.
A brief explanation for those not familiar with the by now 30-year-old Chaos Theory. "Although we as humans seem to abhor chaos and avoid it whenever possible, nature uses chaos in remarkable ways to create new entities, shape events and hold the Universe together ... But the real meaning of chaos for us, as individuals and as society, is only now beginning to be explored". So say John Briggs and F. David Peat in one of the most significant books printed at the turn of the century SEVEN LIFE LESSONS OF CHAOS – Spiritual Wisdom From The Science of Change (Harper Collins) 2000.
In this book, chaos is explored – not from the usual quest for order – but from a perspective that is although scientific, has been acknowledged for millennia by most ancient traditions, indigenous cultures and tribal beliefs. Chaos is everything. It is not a result, but a process ... not an enemy, but a tool ... not a limitation, but complete freedom. More than a few words jaded by negative connotation in the Oxford Paperback Thesaurus, Chaos – in scientific terms – describes the "underlying interconnectedness in apparently random events … focusing on hidden patterns, nuance, the 'sensitivity' of things and the rules for how the 'unpredictable' leads to the new".
By exploring the order within seeming disorder, the power of one within the whole, the beauty of glorious discovery emerging from what initially looked flawed, SEVEN LIFE LESSONS OF CHAOS, is tremendously reassuring. In many ways, it confirms what we already know ... that there is a certain perfection in life's imperfections and that to deny this is to deny our capability to be surprised, delighted and to ultimately delight.
Haven't we all reached incredible life-changing "ahas" just when all seemed to be falling apart? How often have we fitted a week into an hour and have had an hour feel like a day? Chaos theory finally acknowledges that try as we might, there are no exact straight lines in anything – especially in the way we perform and live - as individuals and within our context.
Listen to this: " ... corporations are calling on their people for more creativity, commitment and innovation ... BUT ... people are not allowed to admit weakness, acknowledge self-doubt or make mistakes ... expressions of chaos are suppressed – the very activities necessary for creativity to take place ... ... systems based on power emanating from the top cannot plan for the wild efflorescence of impossible events we call daily life ... ... organizations that acknowledge the soul of workers are stronger, more ethical, less destructive ... willing to ask deeply radical questions about whether their products are actually necessary."
At a time when being seen only as producers and consumers is ringing more than usually hollow, when crazy uncontrollable stuff seems to be happening worldwide, when planes are flying into buildings, ice caps are melting, we watch five-year-old documentaries and wonder if what we're seeing still exists, the humanity of making mistakes is not acknowledged and we're as good as our last piece of work, this book allows for the chest to open once more ...
Suddenly, a sense of real personal power that is forged by the realisation that we are as much a part of a whole as we are the whole itself, starts creeping in. Very slowly, the joy at being imperfect and not having to be anything more - because nothing is, except for the uncontrollable process that being alive on Earth entails and the fact that we all somehow are blessed enough to exist – lets the air penetrate every cell in our choked up lungs.
BREATHE ... AGAIN ... SLOWER ... DEEPER ... ONE MORE TIME ...
NOW SMILE
Ultimately, life is about being unable to predict and control, thus freeing us to just be and to really do. Rather than feeling like autumn leaves clinging to a tree, it encourages us to let go and be there as we fall – we’d never know that we can float on a breeze if we didn't.
Strato Copteros is a freelance writer and creative working in the advertising, travel writing, corporate communications, documentary and video production arenas.
He also consults on relationship building, accessing creativity and finding your inner presentation skills. Strato believes that mountains talk, the sea whispers and that every living being has a consciousness more than equivalent to that of man. To him, the humility we feel when seeing what every other life form and person on Earth has accomplished, is capable of and has survived, is truly the only way to achieve personal greatness in what you choose to do. We are all one.
