Between Order and Chaos
How to cope when things are out of your control.
It’s 2020: The year of chaos—the year where the boundary between order and chaos is no longer present. As days pass, I find myself slowly delving into chaos.
So what do you do when things are out of control? You talk to people — family, friends, mentors. The first person I called was Riya, a good friend who studies in an engineering college. Riya told me about her fear of graduating the college — she had been a topper for three years and never failed a subject. “Life took an ugly turn when I got hospitalized due to dengue, and I couldn’t write two exams,” she said.
Ugly? But it wasn’t under your control, I said. “Yes, it wasn’t, but at least I was hopeful that I would write the exams in the next semester and pass. But now, because of the Coronavirus, the university hasn’t released the dates of my lab exams. They released the dates of the theory exams tho!”
Chaos.
I called another friend Ryan, a final year student and recently started working in a company.
“’ Congratulations, dude,” I said.
After a few minutes of silence, Ryan replied with a sigh, “Thanks.”
“what’s wrong?” I asked.
“Well, I recently got a call from another company. They told me that I am selected for the position of a Full Stack Developer, and it pays a lot more than my current job. The problem is that I’ve already signed a bond with the current company and I can’t leave it for one year. ”
“Why did you not wait, then?” I asked.
“I received a mail from them a month ago that the position of the Full Stack Developer was canceled due to the pandemic, but now, out of nowhere, it’s back, dammit!”
Chaos.
One friend told me of how she was tested Corona positive a week before her exams. Another friend couldn’t write his exams due to heavy rainfall and floods in Hyderabad.
Chaos.
Well, countless people are frustrated and sad. But truth be told, you cannot control everything in life. The Entropy in our lives, the randomness of it all, has increased confusion and with great confusion comes great stress.
So, how do you cope when things are out of control?
I looked into history to find patterns and tactics used by men and women who lived a good life amidst chaos and unpredictability.
Here are some ways that will help you create order in a world of chaos:
- Acceptance
- Find your purpose
- Faith
- Routine
- Shift your paradigm
Acceptance
The first step is to accept that you cannot control everything, and that’s okay.
Find your purpose
What’s your purpose? It’s easy to find your purpose. Just answer these questions: What makes you smile? What do you see when you close your eyes and think about success? What excites you? In the deepest darkest alleys of self-doubt and chaos, the thing that will keep you going is your purpose.
Victor Frankl, a neurologist, and Holocaust survivor survived the brutal Auschwitz camp because he found meaning in suffering. His purpose was to formulate a new paradigm that would help people like you and me. It helped him stay hopeful while a lot of people had lost all hope and flung themselves onto the electric barbed-wires.
So, Don’t you dare think that your suffering is useless; it is teaching you to become resilient.
Faith
What do Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King Jr have in common? It’s Faith — They chose to believe in the future that they couldn’t see…yet. The choice is yours. Are you going to focus on the frustrating present or visualize the future you want? Can you believe that you can get out of the chaos? Or at least create an order for yourself?
Routine
Now, the things you can control: you should control! Create a routine for yourself, do the things you want to get done. Just do it. Make the sacrifices today for a better tomorrow.
Please make a list of things that you have power over and work on it.
Shift your paradigm
Chaos will always loom in the background of your life. When you fail at something, you can call it a failure or a learning experience.
Success and failure are social paradigms created by men. They do not exist. So, it’s all in your head. You choose to be successful or not. Also, the voice in your head dictates your life. So what you believe in, actually matters.
Between order and chaos lies transformation, growth and resilience.
© Shreya Sinha 2020
Written by Shreya Sinha, Thank you for reading.
