Over the past couple of weeks, I have had two interesting conversations. One with someone who has known me for years and has seen me through many stages of life. Someone comfortable enough to be honest…brutally but affectionately honest. The second conversation was with someone I was meeting for the first time for an “intuitive” session that I had requested (more about the “intuitive” part in another post). Coincidentally, in both conversations, the word “chaos” came forward in describing patterns of life and behavior as it pertained to questions I was asking about myself.

Of course, I was immediately offended. That is generally my knee-jerk reaction; one I have honed with perfection over many years. Offended, then angry. Then a little mystified. I consider myself such a type A. Organized and logical. Yes, I have made poor decisions. Yes, there have been blips of WTF if you were to map out my life as a graph. But chaotic? It just seemed like such a powerful and negative label.

Though I still react with many of my old standby “habits” (defensiveness, the shut down, the stewing), I am becoming more and more aware of how these behaviors aren’t always the best choices. So, keeping my discomfort to myself, I challenged myself just a bit. Could there be any truth to this descriptor? Did anything about this resonate with me? I mulled the word over A LOT through the following days. Two different people said it. One person had never met me before-knew nothing about my life. Something didn’t sit right with me. I wanted to fight it-but I just couldn’t. There was something there for sure.

Of course, not wanting to admit defeat (yes, I have historically lived my life as a battlefield), I turned to my only other hope of escaping the word. I decided to look it up-maybe I had actually misunderstood the meaning of the word “chaos” after 46 years of living. I felt much better after this idea. It couldn’t actually belong to me-that word. It had to be miscommunication or a misinterpretation.

Yet it wasn’t. I learned that it’s actually not only a word (with many different origins and roots to Greek mythology etc. etc.) but a branch of mathematics. And, yes, it means what I thought it meant. However, going a bit deeper, it doesn’t just stop at the “wildly disorganized and random” part. Chaos theory (very simply put) focuses on underlying patterns that are highly sensitive to initial conditions. They are thought to have random states of disorder. BUT-within this disorder, there are underlying patterns of connection and feedback loops. There is repetition and self organization. This is just the tip of the iceberg. This theory goes deep-there are many different applications for it in many different disciplines of study.

My take home message was this: from apparent disorder comes spontaneous re-organization.

I also drew comfort from the “highly sensitive” reference. I could (and might) write a whole blog post on this. I’ve always been highly sensitive. Again, this is a term that can often have a negative connotation to it. It is a quality in myself that I have loved and loathed. In this circumstance though, I could easily see how sensitivity and chaos go hand in hand. Much like the autostereograms that were popular in the 90’s. Things look unrecognizeable until you look at them properly. Then you wonder how you missed it.

I’m understanding that the same holds true for chaos-I have been in the midst of situations that have appeared unrecognizable to me. However, on a deeper level, I knew I was making some sense of them. Even if it was on a more unconscious level in some moments. Eventually, all of my chaos found its resting place and settled.