A reflection written during the summer of 2019
The day begins as many do with the making of coffee. While the water is heating to a boil and during the time it takes for the hot water to drip through ground coffee, I begin to arrange dishes, cups, glasses, and silverware, which have been air drying overnight onto and into their respective places on shelves, drawers, and cupboards.
While sipping caffeine my mind turns to the day’s tasks before me. Clothes need to be washed, dried, folded, and arrayed in dressers; the house needs to be cleaned and made to look orderly for guests arriving later today; the garage has descended into an unorganized mess, such that I can’t slide my car in; the refrigerator and pantry require restocking; unopened mail is stacked on my desk calling for attention; and on and on and on.
Many days are like this. A significant part of the mundane life involves putting things in their place. Another day, another corralling of cats. The multitude of variables attached to physical entities that occupy, crowd, intrude, define, and fill our lives call out to us continually, forcing us to decide on any number of organizing courses to take. For all of our possessions demand choices to be made. Do we ignore, dispose, categorize, save, give, sell, bequeath, or destroy each of these countless items we’ve bought, acquired, or adopted? These decisions can’t be avoided, because the natural order of things is that our stuff and consequently our lives progressively descend into disorder.
The list of must-dos we assign ourselves is vast indeed. They include an endless list of activities related to maintaining a home, occupation, family, community, and environment. Efficiency and custom dictate that everything has its place, so we engage in unceasing arranging and re-arranging of materials in a never-ending energy and time expenditure. Pick up, shelve, store, tidy, clean, and pack. And to what avail? Is the effort worth it?
I’ve often questioned whether the vast amounts of time spent on combating muddle has value. Why, after all, can’t we just live life as it is without feeling this urgency to establish and maintain countless patterns and systems? Isn’t the universe unfolding as it should without need for our frantic and artificial human interventions?
Entropy is a term borrowed from physics, more specifically thermodynamics. Technically it refers to the naturally occurring disorder and randomness of a system’s thermal energy, rendering the energy less available for conversion into mechanical work. For the layman, it is a useful word for describing everyday chaos, turmoil, and disarray that can occur if left unattended. As seems to be our common perception, the disparate yet connected domains that make up our worlds do seem to be forever crumbling before us, urging us to sandbag against an impending flood of clutter time and time again. So there. Entropy. We now have a word for it.
It undoubtedly appears that I have tipped my hand in this piece by explicitly leaning in a critical direction when suggesting there may be liabilities of too much entropy-reducing indulgence. After all, isn’t there more to life than marshalling belongings? Do we run a risk of enslaving ourselves to a life of constant orderliness, leaving little time and energy for more enriching pursuits? Yes, I do believe this is a condition we must guard against. When the realization snaps into focus that nearly every waking hour is dedicated to some manner of organization is a good time to consider the possibility of alternatives.
The trick for me, and I suspect for many other people, is in determining how to live with just enough life-sustaining upkeep to enjoy the benefits of a well-ordered world, while not becoming consumed by an over-maintenance of seemingly humdrum details. Perhaps a means of identifying where on the ‘neat-freak/c’est la vie’ spectrum one is can be approached by conducting a type of cost-benefit or SWOT analysis. (SWOT, by the way, stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats. It’s a business school thing.) A purposeful self-examination can get us focused on the potential and actual gains of combatting entropy and how much outlay of time, energy, and stress is worth expending to realize these rewards.
We all have an individualized way of approaching such a personal inquiry. For example, let’s say I am examining my disheveled surroundings. I have a tertiary choice. Leave it as it is, add to the mess, or intervene by cleaning. What drives my decision? Ultimately it comes down to what will make feel better. Will I find greater satisfaction by preserving the status quo, by contributing to the chaos, or by tidying up? So, which will it be?
My strength is in doing what feels right to me. My version of propriety means I am following a valued course of action, which has the added value of creating an incentive or opportunity to perform other acts of decorum. To give into my weakness would be to procrastinate and avoid action, possibly setting the stage for other confrontations, which may leave me unable to cope. Do I want to feel empowered or not? Emotion governs behavior.
Perhaps, nature can serve as a guide. Free of human involvement the earth’s other life forms, the most conspicuous being plants and animals, just go about their business of sheltering, feeding, and procreating. No muss, no fuss. The process appears pre-determined and programmed and there are challenges to be sure, but overall the generations manage to burn brightly for their allotted time, followed by a convenient decomposition, providing grist for succeeding lifetimes.
We humans in contrast have certainly arranged to complicate our time on earth considerably. To live in a manner inspired by nature may simplify our range of freewill demands. We could give ourselves permission to match the rhythm and pace of the natural world by calibrating mindfully the amount of demands we cram into a day with the potential freedom that can come from a more intrinsic outlook.
Free of an unforced over-organizing tyranny it becomes possible to glide through life unhurried, with less stress, and fewer regulations. We are liberated to enjoy life as it is and consciously feel gratitude for our surroundings, even if they are somewhat disordered. To stand in our own power without worrying what others think becomes easier to do. Getting control of our own lives and schedules can be the tangible result of intentionally letting go of the incidentals.
On the other hand, a degree of order enhances life and ties us to a comforting sense of place. In a chaotic world we need predictability and stability to ground and center us. Immersing ourselves in an environment that increases both situational efficiency in that we know where things are when we need them, but that also soothes our souls as we take in our pre-arranged décor, art, and sentimental objects tastefully configured around us.
In truth, the choice before us is not one of selecting entropy-reducing enslavement versus living a life of disarray absent order or organization. The answer for each of us individually is to find our own plot point on the spectrum between these extremes. However, broadening our awareness about how and why we confront entropy in the manner we typically do on a daily basis can be self-informative about how we meet life’s challenges, the allocation of time and energy we expend addressing what we think is important, and the level of joy we derive from each day.