I was thinking about how I’ve recently given my apartment a deep clean, and how I always struggle to keep it clean. It made me think of entropy.
Yah, I know. A little odd, but there you go.
Things that are organized have no stability; hence, the universe tends towards disorganization, as it likes stability. How’s that for entropy made simple?
Sure, this is a nice and easy way to get out of cleaning my own apartment, but I’ve been thinking about this disorganization is stability concept. How often have we tried to plan out an event only to have something go wrong? Did we freak out about it, or just let it ride as the Universe righting itself? Lord knows I’ve freaked out about events going awry – I was determined to have every single aspect of the event organized before the event. Thinking about it further, I can’t think of any other way than saying I was trying to one-up the Universe.
How often have we tried to plan out a day, only to have it go horribly off track? That’s certainly happened to me, more often than I can count. Part of me cringes at the mere thought of an organized day going off track, but the mere derailment of an organized day doesn’t mean the day is lost – sometimes, it ends up better than originally planned, sometimes worse, but either way it’s the Universe kicking that organization to the curb.
Taking this even further, how often have we tried to plan out our lives only to have it go awry?
I’ve got a friend going through this turmoil right now – his life isn’t where he had planned for it to be, and it’s clearly causing him some pain. I’ve certainly gone through that, as my quarter life crisis posts suggest from over a year ago. I would say I’m out of that phase now. I can’t say its anything active on my part, but I think a large part of it is acceptance that, yes, life won’t ever be organized to my desires, but a large part of that is clearly out of my control – gravity will pull the blocks down no matter how high I stack them, and liquids will always fit the shape of its container.
So maybe I shouldn’t really try to plan out the next few years of my life, the next few decades of my life. Part of me is already anxious over that thought – odd, since I really don’t have any sort of plan, but the mere thought of not having a plan causes anxiety (now that calls for future exploration.) Besides the inevitable anxiety over the plan, and anger when not meeting the plan, the universe is pretty clear that organization won’t last.
It’s easy to say I’ll just leave “it”, aka my life, up to the Universe, well, easy to type, but it seems extraordinarily difficult to actually believe and accept. Accepting that your organization will inevitably fall like Newton’s apple means that you’re powerless. And it’s not appropriate to feel powerless in our society. It’s easy to fight against the Universe, and make grandiose plans on where you’ll be in ten years. Easy to fight against, but impossible to win.
You have on the other hand, those that say the Universe helps those who help themselves. Maybe the right method is to have a general direction of where you’d like to go without the specifics that you become too attached too. But, then again, when running a business, how often do you need to have that specific plan for the long term. But is there any such thing as long-term success in the corporate world? Inevitably, all businesses will fail at some point – nothing’s permanent. So while the short term (short term could even be on the order of decades and centuries mind you) needs a plan for corporate success, no long-term plan can cure that inevitable death (either corporate or human.)
For those with the continual five-year plans, I wonder how happy they are in comparison to those without detailed plans, but floating through the universe without a pile of blocks to be knocked over. Because isn’t that the goal for all of us? To find happiness, no matter what our definition of happiness may be? If my blocks keep getting knocked down by the Universe in its desire for disorder but stability, I won’t be happy as I have to constantly restack them.
But maybe stability isn’t what everyone wants in life. They want to stack up the bocks to get to their highest potential, and if the universe knocks them down, they find joy in rebuilding. I’ve come to realize that stability means more to me then great heights. [Part of this, I’m sure, was the severe instability of my childhood – and the desire to find stability for once. (“My happy little ruts.”)] I find comfort, and dare I say happiness, in the stability of my life. Maybe I need to try to fight the Universe a little less often and try to listen to it more.
