Postcards from Real Life: Chaos

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

Chaos rules our world. It’s what makes our lives so interesting. The surprises—for better or worse—are probably what keeps us from taking our life outcomes for granted.

Chaos touches everything in our lives. Every moment of every day.

I’m talking about the “science-y” chaos, of course. Not the descriptive meaning in the sense of something being messy, busy, jumbled, etc.

While there’s overlap between them, the more technical of the two is often misunderstood. It’s important to remember that chaos in terms of our natural systems doesn’t mean everything is random, just difficult to predict.

These systems are tremendously complex. One small input has cascading impacts. And the collection of small inputs builds into a massive array of possible outcomes.

Which is amazing and mind-blowing when you consider the possibilities. If our world was easily predictable, life would probably be pretty damn boring. The Butterfly Effect is what keeps us on our toes. (Side note: That moniker of chaos theory is a huge oversimplification, but it gives us non-mathematicians a place to start.)

And if we think about our own lives in a “Butterfly-Effect” philosophical kind of way, we get to the crux of why my tagline is “This was not in the brochure.”

Because the collection of our life events and “inputs”—big and small—are just as intricately unpredictable as the natural systems that operate in the world. The decisions we make, combined with the things that happen to us in the course of our lives, make for a fuck-all crazy labyrinth of possibilities.

Yet in our humanity, we still seek predictably in an unpredictable world. The metaphorical “brochure” says if you do “X” you’ll get “Y” and your life will be picture-perfect and fabulous. We all know that’s horse shit really, but we still seem to want to buy into the dream.

But the truth is, if we knew how everything was going to work out-if our lives were predictable-that would be pretty fucking dull. And we’d take our life outcomes for granted. For better or worse, the unknowns are the heart of life.

So when life delivers something unexpected think of having little Val on your shoulder saying, “Well that was not in the brochure!” If that surprise was for the worse, feel free to insert as many f-bombs as you need to work your way through it.

As for my butterfly friend here—the unwitting poster-child of chaos—we’ll have to leave its impacts on the world to our imaginations. And continue to marvel at the complex workings of our world.

Peace out!

Bluesky Art Show

This post is inspired by the Bluesky Art Show, a challenge to share artwork surrounding a weekly theme each Saturday.