Nature can seem messy and disorganized. Gardening, for example, is not nature because we impose our sense of order on that little landscaped piece we call garden or backyard.
When our life is turned upside down due to a sudden change or upset we perceive it is chaotic because the order and patterns we have created are undone. “Chaos is order without predictability,” my yoga teacher so wisely said recently. The universe has laws, nature has patterns, but we don’t always understand or see them from our down-in-the-trenches perspective. When things become unpredictable we call them chaotic.
Change can seem scary because we wade into unchartered territory; sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel remains very dim or even invisible for some time. We wish for control and certainty because change requires us to shift, think differently, get out of our comfort zone, change patterns and ways of doing things.
But chaos and confusion can also be seen as full of opportunity, like a pregnant pause, a nudge from the universe to rearrange things. In hindsight, messy upsets usually and eventually reset themselves into new patterns that make sense once again. Meanwhile, sometimes we just have to trust the universe for being way ahead of us and seeing the bigger picture.