What is Chaos? The middle ground between order and disorder….

A few weeks ago I wrote about the chaos in my garden – my daughter’s description, not necessarily mine.  I find the them of trying to find “order” in my life keeps coming back over and over.  Moving my blog over to this URL I am still missing a few key elements from my other site.  One of them, my oldest, in length of years not in age, friend Tracy pointed out was the comment “you never know what you might find here”.  That is probably the key element of description for a my blog.  I pull together a seemingly random collection of topics and thoughts that come to mind.  So maybe its time to revisit Chaos.

What is Chaos?

I mentioned the book Sync by Steven Strogatz in my previous entry http://amzn.to/qz51bZ .  As I was flipping through the pages recalling different parts of the book I came across a discussion of chaos.  Here is the discussion from the book that drove home the key “theme”, if there is one, of my blog:

“The first step is to understand chaos itself.  Unfortunately, many of us begin with faulty preconceptions about what chaos is like.  Part of the confusion stems from the word itself.  In colloquial usage, chaos refers to a state that only appears random, but is actually generated by nonrandom laws.  As such, it occupies an unfamiliar middle ground between order and disorder.  It looks erratic superficially, yet it contains cryptic pattersn and is governed by rigid rules.  It’s predictable in the short run but unpredictable in the long run.”

I really like the thought of my bog occupying the middle ground between order and disorder.

But then I read on in the book to further discussion of chaos.

“Another subtlety: In chaos, every point is a point o finstability.  It’s worse than the quandary face by Robert Frost’s traveler in “The Road Not Taken” (see earlier post – more lessons from the trail) – a life ruled by chaos is even more precarious.  Every moment would be a moment of truth.  Every decision would have long-term consequences that would alter your life beyond recognition.”

Wow, that really gets my head spinning.  A person could go nuts going back and hashing over decisions from the past and trying to figure out how they changed the present.  Even worse,  a person could get totally bogged down in indecision out of fear of making the wrong decision and going down the wrong road.  I think many people are actually like this – terribly indecisive.  Not me.  In fact, if its possible, I am probably too decisive about everything.  I make my decisions from my gut and therefore don’t always consider every single bit of information or fact available.

What about you?  Is there chaos to your life?  Are you finding order?  How decisive are you?  And is every moment a moment of truth?