Clues in Chaos
The Boulevard Montmartre at Night, Painting by Camille Pissarro
A glass of water spilled all over my desk. I grabbed a kitchen towel and moved all the essentials pretty briskly. The books got the watery cuddle in a very excited manner. I moved everything and gave it a thorough wipe all over the table. Then I picked up books one by one and gave them a hot, windy blow with my hair dryer. But they still looked a little poachy.
The work was truly frustrating but one positive thing came out of the mess; I could clear the disorientation of my workspace in less than 10 minutes. In those unexpected 10 minutes, I cleared the space, rearranged everything, decluttered a few items, and then saw the short refashioning of my desk. That chaotic start turned out as a great deal of positivity. I threw myself lazily on the chair and quite unknowingly gave myself some extra moments of placidness.
Have you ever realized how simple yet bizarre work can give you a win-toss? Just think about those 10 minutes. I am sure you too get the same kind of freaking interruptions. You even think, “Why is it always me?” kind of questions. That’s absolutely okay to get grouchy about your unprecedented chaotic time. That’s natural. But we often miss some hidden clues.
We are all quite familiar with time-management hacks. We draw some great lines between our professional and personal lives. We have created that ‘carefully’ divided time zones for each one of our works. We have digital notification systems, or we use journals, or we use both. In short, our time cannot go into any dark hole without our permission. But we also get upside-down moments and these are not planned. It can be trivial or it can even be the hardest reality-check kind of disaster.
Chaos is not planned and solutions are not given in advance. But chaos always leaves several clues for us. The clues can be called a route of realization, like “See, organization is not a big task.” Or even it can show a great deal of some hard truth, “This place is not for you.” Or it may pass the idea of boasting “You can do better work; you are proving it.”
We have to see what we can get from an ‘out-of-control’ situation. The main idea is to find the clue. This “searching for the clue” method has a perspective-shifting approach.
We can create an imaginary circle around the chaos and try to see it from different perspectives. Each perspective may not show us a clue but each one shows how right or wrong our action is. In the course of perspective-shifting, at least one action will prove that it can never get a wrong signal from any angle. That is the main clue. In any chaos, our actions define the clues for us. And those clues lead us to a bigger place of realization. I call this method Ina*.
We do not welcome chaos by our choice. But when we are dumped into that mess, we ought to get out of that muddled cosmos with some new layers of realization.
(*In Sanskrit, Ina (इन).—a. means determined or anything that is powerful.)