Everyone seems to want to have their shit together. Have you noticed this? When we don’t have our shit together, we’re all ‘man, I really need to get my shit together.’
Maybe it’s your finances or your messy house or the dramas that pop up. Maybe it’s figuring out what you want to be when you grow up (even though you’re already an adult,) or getting on top of your health and fitness or finally having a daily schedule and rhythm that sticks.
In my fantasy world imagination there’s a place where everything takes an ideal form. There’s an ideal day, an ideal rhythm. Everything in my house has it’s place and I keep it together. I’m always up to date on my personal and professional books, knowing where every dollar is and where it’s going. My meals are planned, exercise is a given and I’m on top of my inbox like a champ. Each part of my life is tended to with a kind of sweet rigour. Not all anal and overly structured and stressful, because, who would dream about that?
Actually, if I’m honest, that’s exactly what I dream about, structure and organization and form. Unwavering. But you know what I imagine it feeling like? Free flowing and spacious, an elegant container that holds the flow of my day, where nothing is missed, nothing dropped, everything done and handled. In other words…
Got. My. Shit. Together.
Too bad that’s not real. Too bad there aren’t enough hours in the day to fit in all of what I think I should be giving my attention and energy to. To bad life happens in spits and spurts and bursts and surprises. This is where the fantasy falls apart and this is where striving for that kind of ideal becomes almost a form of self-abuse, looking for the next thing to ‘get on top of’. With that as the ideal, anything that’s out of place or incomplete feels like a failure or at the very least, not-yet-adequate.
So I’ve been exploring the notion of falling in love with chaos.
When we’re in love with chaos, we needn’t resist what’s incomplete or in motion, we needn’t make wrong the capacity we don’t have. When we’re in love with chaos, we’re able to be in, swim in and thus, move more productively into form.
When we resist chaos and relate to it like we need to wrangle it in and get on top of it, we lose discernment around what really needs to be in line and aligned. Or at least I do. I lose perspective on what actually matters and what I most need in order to feel anchored. If I’m obsessing over making things perfect or better or ideal, the smallest misalignment creates anxiety or interior panic. But if I’m good with chaos, if I can chill the fuck out and let the dishes pile up when I’m in a necessary creative flow without berating myself for slipping into an unhealthy habit, I’m better able to know my priorities.
When we layer our priorities with ‘shoulds’ and ‘musts’ and ‘what having our shit together looks like’, what’s ultimately true becomes foggy and we simply chase perfection.
Chasing perfections is the lamest waste of time and energy. In the end, you won’t attain it anyway and you’ll have lost sight of what matters.
Being comfortable with the chaos of life will lessen the likelihood that you’ll get swept away or bowled over by it, enabling you to make clearer moves toward form and thus, in a ‘through the back door’ kind of way, you’ve suddenly got your shit together. It just doesn’t look the way you thought it would.