There is one thing I could never hide in all my life, one feature that I struggled with over and over and over. As much as I tried, living my life neatly, in order? Not possible. Perfectionism is beyond my reach, and it will always be, so why bother getting there. As it seems, most humans think different there. I have heard many sermons about how that is a typical trait for a human. I haven't heard of many people who enjoy being perfectionists tough, it seems stressful and it seems to be a widely spread issue. Maybe I could even call it a fatal flaw of us. Why? For me, it is part of being a living breathing specimen of the human race to fail, to mess up. There is the difference to robots, we have feelings and sometimes they stop us from functioning. Plans don't always work out; some circumstances cannot be predicted.
Don't get my attitude wrong though. If I set myself goals, then I will achieve them, or go down trying. Depending on what it is, I will put my everything in. I can be lazy occasionally, but I am a natural fighter. I just don't set my goals so high that I, as a living, breathing human, cannot accomplish them. I quite enjoy the feeling of victory when hard work pays off, why pressure myself until I will fail? Where is the logic behind that? So many people suffer from burn-outs because they have overstepped their borders. I don’t want that in my life. I’ll just accept that plans will go wrong; that I’ll forget things and that I will fail, because those things just happen anyway. Embrace the mess that is a human life!
I remember the first time I realized that, no matter what, I am chaotic and I should start to accept that. My grades in geography were not at their best and the teacher told me that I could improve them by doing a presentation about this island in the South Atlantic Ocean. As I thought I was quite good with presentations, I took the chance. I don't remember much about it, but it was somehow of a mess. He gave me a feedback in the front of the class stating: "Well, I guess your chaos is what makes you likeable". That little phrase kind of stuck with me ever since then.
In my opinion, I wouldn't be that creative. It took me years to use that word to describe myself, but I am a bag of ideas of which most are not to be used. The other once, the rest, is pure gold. You need to be a little mad, a little crazy to try NaNo, to write stories, to write a blog... I have found that little spark of craziness within me; it is fueled by chaos and life in general. I wouldn't trade the feeling you get when inspiration strikes you for anything, because for a moment, life just is infinite and everything is possible. That is kind of hard to believe if you don't let yourself feel that, because you prefer to keep your life in place.
It happens nevertheless, that I'm occasionally drawn to perfectionism. There is room for that in this pandemonium I call my life. In chemistry and physics there is the concept of entropy, usually entropy increases naturally, which basically means that by nature, chaos spreads whereas order is energy infused (most of the times). A garden, when not looked after, will have a lot of different weeds growing randomly, some flowers, seeds and what not. Still, it could be beautiful. On the other hand, I would never say a man-made garden is not nice to look at. There is even a chance, even if incredibly small, that perfect happens out of chaos. Sometimes it's not a question of one or the other.
A while ago there was someone at our church that has a special gift with telling people what God wants to say to them. A prophet one could say. I could not write this post without speaking about that experience, as it kind of touched the subject. I’m just listening back to it and I am simply impressed. The first thing he said was that I speak a lot (which I thought was plain visible as I was talking to my friends during most of his sermon). Then he added about teachers not taking me seriously due to that, and how I still managed to achieve my goals, leaving them speechless. That’s nothing he could’ve known though. The last thing was the most impressive one. He told me, that I needed to organize my life better. I can safely say that my mouth dropped at that. I’d say you cannot see the chaos around me if you don’t know me at all, so he was onto something. I love being who I am, but being told by an absolute stranger to get my life in order kind of is a statement.
We all have edges, rough patches. We are a mixture of paradoxes, still somehow existing. Well I am at least. Some pieces aren't supposed to fit, but they do. Isn't that the whole beauty of being alive? Chaos and order are not necessary opponents; maybe they are two pieces of the same thing? There is a saying that I loved since I heard it the first time: Everybody can handle order, but only a genius thrives on the chaos. This might be a bit of a rough translation, but apparently Einstein said it (never trust the internet, kids). Thus, I will try to thrive on my chaos now as I’ll go to clean my room. A little bit of both, as I said.
Cheerio.
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