Chaos and Socks

Man and Stone
Originally uploaded by ojodorado

This has, so far, been a chaotic week. Missed appointments, slipped up communications, lost cell phones, misplaced Stuff.

Oh,and get this--you know how easily your socks disappear from your life,so that you end up with always one sock insead of two? Well,today I went to pick up a box of my Stuff from a friend's house and we found a tiny little anklet that looked like it belonged to a child on the floor of her closet.

"Is this yours?' She asked.

"Nope."

"Not mine either," she said.

So my theory is that as we approach 2012 (the end of the Mayan calendar, and for some, a sweeping apocalyptic change of season), and life gets more chaotic, not only are more and more socks disappearing from our laundry into that interdimensional sock-hole that sucks them up, but now the interdimensional sock hole is regurgitating other people's socks into our lives so that we might find them on the floor of our closet, or in our laundry, or god knows where.

Whew. That was a long, and chaotic sentence.

But wait. I happen to be one of those rare people who thrive on a certain amount of chaos--I love the challenge of maintaining one's balance in the midst of it all.

Chaos theory says that chaos only appears to be random, it is really part of a structure that we simply are unable to decipher. So I figure if i find someone else's sock in my Stuff, it is probably trying to tell me something.

Now what that something is I don't know--I can only organize the data according to my own puny mortal mind, and come up with my own ideas.

Maybe it's the sock of some angel child who slipped into my friend's closet at night,and cinderella-like, left her foot covering behind.

Maybe it's trying to tell me that what I think is mine is really mixed up with what's other people's and what I think it other people's is really mixed up with what is mine. That maybe, let's get real profound here, what I think is organized neatly into My Stuff and Your Stuff is really Our Stuff.

So that all this chaos many of us in the world are experiencing right now is meant to shake up our ideas a bit about what Your Stuff and My Stuff really is.

For example, people who had lots of Stuff just a few years ago and looked askance at those that didn't now find their Stuff disappearing from beneath their, uh, socks. Which has forced some people to examine the importance of Stuff in general.

Whether we believe in God or in Chaos Theory or both, chances are that what we now call chaos will eventually be identifable as part of a much larger structure that we just can't see at the moment.

Chaos allows us to freefall into the beauty of unknowing, of realizing that we are not as in control as we thought. But when we cling to disappearing structures, we prevent chaos from washing over us and doing its job.

So if your socks are disappearing from your laundry, maybe it's time to let 'em go.

And if other people's socks are showing up unbidden in your life, maybe it's time to invite them in.

Give chaos a chance.