Order and Chaos, M C Escher, 1950
Build your life brick upon brick.
Live a life of truth,
And you will look back on a life of truth.
Live a life of fantasy,
And you will look back on delusion.The good of today is based upon the good of yesterday. That is why we should constantly be attentive to our actions.
Take frugal people as an example. They recycle the scraps from their cooking into compost piles. They eat at home rather than in restaurants. They do not waste water. They shop carefully. They do not spend their money on frivolities. This is exactly the type of care that we need for spirituality.
We should not fritter our efforts away on amusements; rather, we should concentrate on endeavors most important to us. We should not randomly gather information; rather, we should try to order it into a comprehensive whole, thereby compounding our abilities to our own advantage. We should not carelessly tell lies, because we will then be divorced from the truth that we seek.
Whether our lives are magnificent or wretched depends upon our ordering of daily details. We must organize the details into a composition that pleases us. Only then will be have meaning in our lives.
“What we imagine is order is merely the prevailing form of chaos.” — Kerry Thornley
“The primary sign of a well-ordered mind is a man’s ability to remain in one place and linger in his own company.”
— Seneca
“We need quiet time to examine our lives openly and honestly. . . spending quiet time alone gives your mind an opportunity to renew itself and create order.” — Susan Taylor
“The world is not to be put in order; the world is order, incarnate. It is for us to harmonize with this order.” — Henry Miller
“There is a cheap literature that speaks to us of the need of escape. It is true that when we travel we are in search of distance. But distance is not to be found. It melts away. And escape has never led anywhere. The moment a man finds that he must play the races, go the Arctic, or make war in order to feel himself alive, that man has begin to spin the strands that bind him to other men and to the world. But what wretched strands! A civilization that is really strong fills man to the brim, though he never stir. What are we worth when motionless, is the question.”
— Antoine de Saint-Exupery
I’ve never been really big on what most people would consider to be order. They think of it as neatness, having everything in its place. But that isn’t really what order is about. Nature is ordered, but do you think of a natural scene as one where everything is in place? Fallen trees here, dead branches there – and yet, they serve a purpose. To me, that is what order is about – making sure that the things that are in your life are meaningful to you and serve a purpose, and are as natural as possible. I like the Craftsman era, and William Morris’ saying, “Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful”. Most the surfaces in my home are wood or stone or ceramic. Decorative objects are glass or ceramic or pictures I’ve painted or love, sake containers and rice bowls, and a simple, plain China set that was my mother’s. There isn’t much here that’s very fancy or strictly for decorative purposes.
That’s kind of how I feel about order in my life. If something strikes me as truly beautiful (yes, I know, that isn’t very Taoist of me, but I do like beautiful things…) then I will enjoy having it around and take pleasure from looking at it. If it’s useful and I need it for something, I might not care how it looks. Ideally, it will be both aesthetically pleasing and useful, as many of the Craftsman era designs were.
My house might not strike anyone as particularly well-ordered. The garden is arranged as a cottage-style garden, to look natural, not with plants in neat little rows. The kids aren’t required to keep their rooms spotless, and most of the rest of the house isn’t either. There’s usually dog fur and cat fur around. And it’s a small space, only 1300 square feet for the four of us, but it is well-organized, so we all can have our space (except my husband, who always complains there’s no space for his stuff. Hey, he’s got an office at work… but I do need to work on creating space for him…)
But order is as much internal as external. I can find anything in the house in a couple of minutes, even stuff I didn’t misplace. The kids hate it when they are looking for something and ask me where it is, and I say, “Where you left it”. And then I find it, which really infuriates them.
And, the house is getting cleaned today! So it’s a good day to post about order. Of course, the vacuum cleaner decided to fail and I’m out of toilet bowl cleaner, but oh well. My cleaning ladies are resourceful, and will get the job done. After raising 9 kids, Keena isn’t challenged by my house, that’s for sure. She’s a magnificent older woman with so much energy and spirit. Anyone can hire a cleaning service, but I love Keena because she simply loves to clean and I have a great deal of respect for that, since it isn’t one of my favorite tasks. I tend to be very deatail-oriented when I get in a good cleaning mood, so it takes forever. They are typically done in a couple of hours.
So, if order is about “creating a composition that pleases you”, then my life is pretty well ordered right now. As for the house, well, I don’t think I would spend 20 years in a place that didn’t please me! It’s been small and felt crowded at times, but it’s never felt huge and empty. And that pleases me, a great deal.
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