Last night our boys dumped all of their bins of toys out onto the living room floor. This was after we had spent an hour earlier in the day organizing everything and making the room perfect.
They tried to fill their toy tent with as many of their toys as they could and the thrill they felt at doing so was palpable from across the room. Neither my wife nor I had the desire or energy to even attempt to clean it up.
When I came downstairs this morning to make some coffee I saw the mess again and rolled my eyes. The cats who had followed me downstairs for breakfast slowly ventured into the room and when I turned I saw one of them sitting peacefully in an empty toy bin, an absolute picture of calm.
It made me wonder what I was missing and why chaos can bring thrills and calm to children and cats but anxiety to me?
We can spend our lifetime trying to stop chaos. Putting all the toys back in the bins. Avoiding noise and bustle. Trying to order what is inherently disordered. Fitting things into arbitrary places. Fussing. In essence we fabricate control by attempting to control the people and things around us. But the chaos will always return.
Maybe instead it’s better to embrace the mess. To accept that nothing has a true place. We are constantly moving, scurrying from one place to the next on an ever revolving Earth. No one and nothing is sitting still. There’s just the perception that we are. The perception that things are ordered.
This chaos, this perpetual motion, this inevitable spray of life in every direction, perhaps is a gift. Maybe instead of wishing to slow it down or impose order upon it, we need instead to ask for the strength to hold on to the ride we’ve been given for as long as we can.
I’m not saying the toys never need to go back in the bin. But maybe it doesn’t need to cause us anxiety or get in the way of finding zen in the precious moments we have with ourselves and each other.
