Chaos

“Our real discoveries come from chaos, from going to the place that looks wrong and stupid and foolish.” ~ Chuck Palahniuk

“Chaos theory is a field of study in applied mathematics, with applications in several disciplines including physics, economics, biology, and philosophy. Chaos theory studies the behavior of dynamical systems that are highly sensitive to initial conditions; an effect which is popularly referred to as the butterfly effect. Small differences in initial conditions (such as those due to rounding errors in numerical computation) yield widely diverging outcomes for chaotic systems, rendering long-term prediction impossible in general.[1] This happens even though these systems are deterministic, meaning that their future behavior is fully determined by their initial conditions, with no random elements involved.[2] In other words, the deterministic nature of these systems does not make them predictable.[3] This behavior is known as deterministic chaos, or simply chaos.

Chaotic behavior can be observed in many natural systems, such as the weather.[4] Explanation of such behavior may be sought through analysis of a chaotic mathematical model, or through analytical techniques such as recurrence plots and Poincaré maps.”

A thought has hit me tonight while wathing  a movie, Chaos Theory. Nature is very artistic to me. Purposeful, with reason, and yet mysterious and vivid. 

The fields of corn that I love so much are full of symetry. Each stalk looks similar to the next. Look upon them closer and you can see the hairs sparatic, the lines of the leaves running parrallel, and the kernals all in little rows. Purposeful. Beautiful. 

Look at the same field after a hail storm and it is a whole new picture. Mutilated, broken, chaotic.

Pehaps mental illness is natures chaos, the hail storm for humans. Each disorder and disease we have labled has a pattern a sense of reason behind it. Is that because we as humans need a reason so we group it all together? Label it?

With our ever growing need to feel in control and knowledgable, the human race is striving to understand the things that are in nature chaotic. We developed a theory for just that over a century ago.

Sometimes with the overbearing need to understand, have a solution we push the barriers to a point of  breaking. Beyond any ability to understand or for the picture to become clear. Chaos is sometimes necessary. It can be beautiful and with reason. We just need to accept it as is.

The chaos of my mind needs to be found beautiful by me. If I can think of it the same way I do my children, water, or corn, then perhaps I can embrace me. Through embracing and accepting perhaps my identity can be revealed to me.

So here is to chaos, taking chances, and writing my index cards. 

“Chaos is a friend of mine.” ~ Bob Dylan

“One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.” ~Friedrich Nietzsche