Creating Order from Chaos

My brother in law politely told me last year that statistically I have thirty summers left.

That was how he measured years when he was a child because summer holidays were always filled with fun.

Today is the first of March which means, according to his metric,  there are now only 29 summers to enjoy!

Such morbid talk is said tongue in cheek of course, because none of us know the future. We can only determine to enjoy every moment of the life we have and try to bring joy and happiness to those around us.

Sometimes joy and happiness also brings chaos. That's what happened in the Bernardi household last week. Not content with the stress of moving to a new home, it was also time to pick up our new pup, Ted.

Dog lovers will know that a nine-week old dog is like a toddler. A whirl of energy, excitement and excrement followed by a coma like sleep. Nothing is safe from their inquisitive nature and a trail of educational destruction is left in their wake.

With all that, it is amazing how much joy they bring.

Ted is an amazing little chap. He's already learned to sit and come. His toilet training is getting better every day and he's made himself right at home in our family. Even Remy, our elderly Golden Retriever, is starting to like him.

It's a reminder that not everything has to be orderly or predictable. Sometimes a little chaos is good.

That's what I found so interesting about Jordan Petersen's latest book.

You may have read his bestseller "12 rules for Life - an antidote to chaos." In it, Peterson describes how there are two primordial forces in life - order and chaos. Hi 12 rules provide a roadmap to help navigate these divergent paths and provide a deeper sense of human nature. His book steers one to a more ordered life.

His latest tome is entitled "Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life" and continues his dual forces thesis. However, he now warns that too much security is equally as dangerous as excessive chaos.

He argues that while excessive chaos can cause instability and anxiety, too much order can petrify us. In essence, without chaos we lose the spirit that makes us human.

Peterson suggests we need to get the balance right. Order and structure are important to a meaningful life, but chaos is essential to our basic humanity.

I guess that explains why children, and nine-week old pups, bring so much pleasure to our lives.

We know to expect the frustrations attached to both but the process of creating the right measure of order from the chaos is an extraordinarily satisfying one.