Choosing to Enjoy This Month of Chaos
You Say Chaos Like It’s A Bad Thing
I was thinking of the term “chaos” and how it can be seen as a negative where everything blows up and is destroyed, or as a positive whereby we’re shaken from our doldrums as pieces are tossed around and reassembled in unique ways we might never have discovered had we maintained the status quo. I’ve always had an affinity for The Tower in the Tarot because I saw it, not as destroying everything, but as a clearing of ground to rebuild on a stronger, more resilient foundation.
Sometimes, we have to shake up our lives to rearrange things for the better. And sometimes, the 
Universe does the shaking for us, either by pulling the rug out from under our feet, shredding our safety net, or putting us in a place where we have to make a choice whether we like it or not.
According to the Power Path School’s December forecast, creatives often weather chaos better than others, perhaps because we don’t define ourselves by a rigid set of rules. As a pantser rather than a plotter, I’m not only used to a certain amount of randomness in my life, but in fact, thrive on the unexpected plot twists and outcomes most of the time.
Setting Our Sights And Allowing
In some ways, I’ve trained myself to detach from the outcome. Instead, I toss my balls into the air, 
oblivious to the force or direction of the wind, and trust they’ll fall exactly where they’re supposed to. If I’ve gained nothing else from the training, it’s a more stress-free life.
It doesn’t mean I don’t get thrown for a loop at times; a washer breaks down, a cat needs to go to the vet, I’m distracted and get caught speeding and have to pay a hefty fine. But now I don’t spend a lot of time stressing out over how I’m going to pay for it. If I have to put it on a credit card temporarily, I do it and do my best to avoid looking at the balance. I can only do what I can do, after all.
Meanwhile, I dream my dreams and set my goals, revisiting them frequently, not to try to control my trajectory, but to add details to make the outcome more real and emotion-packed. Then I turn it back over to the winds and allow them to toss the pieces around, breaking apart, rearranging, and ultimately building a better mousetrap than anything I could have cobbled together if left to my own devices.
Is It Fate, or Guidance?
You might ask “are you giving yourself over to fate, then; taking whatever you’re given, nothing more, nothing less?” The answer to that isn’t a simple yes or no. Imagine scattering colored chips across a map. some fall completely randomly, colors mixed up and in complete chaos. But some will fall in pockets of same-colored chips. Those formations are like a roadmap because they draw our attention by their seeming lack of randomness.
I look at my process as much the same. The places which seem to have some cohesiveness are pointing me towards the next step in my path; the next set of challenges I need to undertake in order to move closer to my goals. I could choose to ignore those signs and continue to drift around. That, too is a choice. Or I could pay attention and follow the path that’s laid out before me, trusting when I’ve accomplished the necessary tasks, another sign will appear showing me the way to my next set of challenges, meanwhile, bringing me still closer to those goals.
Listening to the Voices Within
In the process, I’ll likely fine-tune my goals as I get a clearer picture of the steps I need to take and the choices I need to make. But that’s the reason behind setting the goals and allowing the hows, the paths to show themselves to me. It means there are times when I’ll drift along, seeming to be riding a current not of my making. There are others where I’ll have to jump out of the current and dive head first into something I’m not entirely sure I can handle, but trusting help will arrive when I need it to keep me from going under.
Thus, I’m like the willow tree which bends and flexes in a storm, but doesn’t break though the wind flings it’s bows hither and yon. At times, I’m smacking myself in the face, or so it seems, because my limbs defy any attempt at control. Others, I stand still and unmoving, appearing to be waiting, but in fact, listening carefully for the next message, or quietly performing tasks which, to the outside world seem meaningless and mundane.
Embracing Opportunities to Accept Help
One of my biggest lessons has been learning to request and accept help. Only by following the trail of 
breadcrumbs will I find myself in situations where I have an opportunity to exercise what I’ve been learning. Only by practicing patience (another lifelong lesson) will I know when the time is right to ask and receive.
I had an opportunity to see those lessons bear some pretty wonderful fruit when my daughter, son-in-law and “adopted” son put together our 4th annual after-Thanksgiving feast. We all have our tasks to do, but in years past, I was the focal point for directing where things went and how they were placed. This time, I focused on my own responsibilities, gave instructions about what I wanted, and left it to the others to make it happen. The results were far better than the pictures in my head. Though I discovered later that as usual, I’d failed to put some of the food and drink I’d bought or made for the occasion out, nobody noticed the lack. Instead, everyone talked and laughed, and enjoyed each others’ company, which was the point of the event in the first place.
To the outside world, the four of us might have resembled a Chinese fire drill, running around, dodging furniture, and getting in each others’ way. But in reality, it was a finely tuned dance not unlike the wind tossing leaves into the air, to bring them down in beautiful patterns of brown and gold on lawns, roof tops, and sidewalks.
Breaking Down the Old, Rotted, and Obsolete
I’m looking forward to a chaos which will invariably knock down a few ancient structures leaving space to build stronger, more resilient foundations and structures in their place. The rigidity of my past has no place in my future. I’ll have enough to keep me busy stepping up to the next set of challenges without wasting time worrying about where to step next. I put my trust in the chaos which will clear a path for me when it’s time to move forward again. In the meantime, I am building my foundation and creating habits which will make me better able to weather the coming storms. Those storms are going to blow away a lot of debris which, even now, is cluttering my life and creating an obstacle course between me and what I need to do to make those dreams a reality.
Are You Ready to Embrace the Chaos?
How do you deal with chaos? Do you throw up your hands and look for someone or something to blame? Do you grab a shovel and a rake and start clearing the rubble so you can see what you have to work with? Do you work alone or grab a few friends to help make the job go quicker and the task seem lighter?
The way you choose to manage unexpected plot twists will determine your attitude and mood in the coming weeks and months. Of one thing I’m certain. The world is changing. The old, rigid, myopic ways which have been eroding slowly for decades are now being subjected to earthquakes and landslides which will either test their mettle or send them crashing down in a million tiny pieces. Only those willing and able to alter their course will ride this storm successfully. And by the way, bonus points for team work!
Immensely Grateful
My gratitudes today are:
- I am grateful for the lessons I’m finally learning; patience, community, asking for help.
- I am grateful for being able to look at the coming storms through the eyes of a child, wide-eyed with wonder, and excited about the possibilities.
- I am grateful for finally recognizing and appreciating what happens when I let go and allow others to play a part too.
- I am grateful for my community, my friends, my family. They teach me new things all the time.
- I am grateful for abundance; love, life, friendship, joy, peace, harmony, productivity, insights, inspiration, motivation, health, philanthropy, and prosperity.
Love and Light
About the Author
Sheri Conaway is a writer, blogger, ghostwriter, and advocate for cats. Sheri believes in the Laws , 
of Attraction, but only if you are a participant rather than just an observer. Her mission is to Make Vulnerable Beautiful and help entrepreneurs touch the souls of their readers and clients so they can increase their impact and their income. If you’d like to have her write for you, please visit her Hire Me page for more information. You can also find her on Facebook Sheri Levenstein-Conaway Author or in her new group, Putting Your Whole Heart Forward.
I’m no stranger to grief. I’ve had enough opportunities in my life where it was not only appropriate but necessary. But I’m no stranger to suppressing or denying my grief either. When each of my parents died, I made thousands of excuses to keep going on, business as usual while I broke into a million little pieces inside. I convinced myself the grief wasn’t necessary and got in the way of doing the things I was supposed to. In a lot of ways, both my family and Society had trained me well—too well.
a place to dance. As stories are shared of celebrations, of countless marriages which came about because of meetings at that particular place, of families sharing, of connections that last for years, even when people move away; I realize not only for me, but for thousands of others, it became a home. We came together, some as friends, others as strangers, and became a family connected at the heart.
Even as so many communicate only by text message or social media, it’s been a place where cell phones are put down, if only for a few minutes, and connections are made on the dance floor, doing something that brings joy not only to the dancers, but to those on the sidelines watching.
We didn’t just lose people on November 7th. Even those we didn’t know well were familiar, comforting faces we saw every week. Some helped maintain order and kept the place friendly and the dance floor safe. Others were a smiling face that greeted us or served us food and drinks, raising our spirits no matter how the day had gone. No matter what role they played, they were familiar faces; people we’d 
come to know by sight, and who, in their own way, brought joy into the place by their very presence. But more, they were part of a family which shared in each others’ successes, commiserated when jobs or family were lost, celebrated birthdays, weddings, births, anniversaries…
Admittedly, it isn’t easy to reach out to people who are continually angry or depressed. They’re harder to be around, more difficult to love, and sometimes impossible to understand. Some isolate themselves, then blame their isolation on society, and rightfully so. Even in a family, you often have to fit in first before you can start showing your broken parts. Some people are so broken, they believe the only way they can hide those uncomfortable parts is by staying within their own four walls.
who’ve lost so much more. Even in the privacy of my own home, I’ve yet to shed more than a few tears, though many more are dammed up inside me waiting for an opportunity to flow.
In tragedy, families pull together. Not only families by blood, but families formed of a mutual love for something or someplace. My family is formed of people who dance, and specifically, people who dance at Borderline Bar and Grill.
I’ve learned healing is more profound, more deep-set when the process is shared with others. I learned the hard way that internalizing pain makes it fester and grow until it eventually comes out in an explosion, and for some, with disastrous consequences.
I don’t have any answers right now. The pain so many of my friends and family are feeling is often overwhelming to me, as it is to the rest of the Empaths and HSP’s around here. We have, not only the murders in our own home to process, but loss of life and property from two wildfires which began before the dust could clear, or the murder investigation finish. Many of my extended family were displaced, albeit temporarily. Some may have lost their homes. We’ve all been affected, either by being evacuated, or taking someone in.
Connecting with other people is a scary proposition when you’re used to living behind mile-high walls and wearing masks to cover up your true feelings. Admitting you’re not strong enough to handle all of life’s challenges alone is terrifying because you have no idea how people will react. You expect ridicule, abuse, and humiliation rather than love, compassion, understanding, and support, so you don’t reach out.
Though I wasn’t directly affected by the fires or the shooting, the outpouring of support I received from many directions was both unexpected and heartwarming. Even now, as services, fund raisers, and vigils are held for the victims and the survivors, and I’m overwhelmed by heavy emotions on all sides, that support system I’m still somewhat amazed to find is there when I flounder.
Lately I’ve found myself standing in front of the mirror and instead of seeing all the places in my body and face where I could use some improvements I’m seeing all the progress I’ve made.
Once we recognize the impossible things we’ve already accomplished, we simply need to look at everything else we deem impossible and see how we overcame our own limitations and succeeded, often in extraordinary ways.
Whatever we undertake which takes us out of our comfort zone is part of our journey and, as such doesn’t have a completion date. We continue to learn and grow, improving our skills and strengthening our muscles as we take on more and more, going beyond what we thought ourselves capable of when we began. The lessons we learned from early childhood forward are interwoven into our psyches and the root system is deeply embedded. We might pull some things out by the roots, but tendrils remain, intertwined with lessons we learned or revisited further along our path.
recognize the beauty in our differences, the value in what we unconsciously deemed flaws, it’s difficult to make progress untying those knots; unearthing the roots. Certainly, we could go about it violently, poisoning the roots and burning the cord. But doing so wouldn’t really alter our thinking or rework the triggers we’ve created through years of living life, falling down, getting hurt, and getting back up again.
A major part of our gentler handling of those old wounds comes from being willing and able to look at ourselves through kinder eyes with more realistic expectations. From a less lofty and unforgiving place, we see how far we’ve come, how much we’ve improved, and how clear our path is to continued improvement and previously impossible goals. In other words, by seeing how much we’ve improved rather than how much we need to work on.
This morning, I got a wake up call in the form of a kick in the pants, virtually. Upon reading a friend’s post which started “after my morning bible study” I caught myself thinking disdainful, unkind, and utterly unwarranted thoughts. Catching myself in those thoughts, I pulled up short and asked: how is morning bible study any different from my own practice of writing morning pages? I had to answer honestly that it’s no different, any more than praying is different from my practice of meditating.
unfathomable. Nevertheless, we’re friends and don’t see a need to argue our points. In fact, most of the time, when a hot issue is raised by someone who sees things opposite from the way I do, I’ll either make an innocuous comment before going silent, or, if the conversation continues with others who agree with them, I’ll find the opportunity to slip away.
think about creating a way for people to come in and out. We’re simply trying to block out the pain and discomfort. We build walls without gates; houses without doors and windows. Only when we’ve built up some scar tissue do we realize we omitted something important. Then we have to decide whether a bit of demolition to correct the oversight is worth the pain we know we’ll endure by cracking the edifice we constructed so intensely in a moment when we were all feelings and no logic.
The trouble is, we huddle behind those pain-induced walls for so many reasons. We isolate ourselves from the mainstream of life without even realizing it. We do it every time we close our minds to how similar we are, despite our disagreement on what we believe are monumental issues. If we stopped to realize how similar we are, we’d never have to withhold our feelings again.
I recently saw a commercial for a tiny, cube-shaped camera you could hide anywhere in your home, and my initial feeling was how easily some of the creepier people could make use of such a device. I’m sure my reaction was triggered by a recent exposé about a man who rented out his place through Air B n B and had cameras hidden in smoke detectors in the bedrooms. To have a device promoted on national television, especially late at night made me think their target audience was lonely creeps looking for a way to be even creepier.
in the wrong hands can be dangerous”. I had no idea how true those words would become a few decades later. George Orwell wasn’t as naive as me, penning his famous work, 1984 40 years earlier, in 1944.
What Mr. Orwell couldn’t predict was how the widespread use of technology would make it so easy for people to spy on each other and invade someone’s privacy completely undetected. It occurs to me if Hitler had had today’s technology, he might have succeeded in his nefarious schemes. And certain people who revere him and his actions today may be on a trajectory which could allow them to succeed where he did not.
a small, almost imperceptible blinking light inside a smoke detector where it had no business being? How many warning signs do the rest of us miss because we remain trusting? How often do we take advantage of alternatives which simplify our lives or cost less, leaving us exposed to people whose moral compasses are broken?
I look at how I reacted on a day when a website I use to track my food and exercise went down for a few hours. I fell completely off track (though thankfully, not as badly as I thought I had) because I didn’t have the electronic means of controlling what I should be able to do on my own. My dependency on an app left me alone and drifting until I could once again connect and make sure I adhered to the nutritional goals I’d set.
pages using nothing more than a pen and spiral notebook. Or why I try to set aside an hour or so a week to get away from my computer, again with pen and notebook to write somewhere different, be it a cafe, a park, the beach, or even my front porch.
There’s a lot of talk these days about the damage we do judging people by the way they look, whether it’s something that’s seemingly fixable like clothing or hygiene, or a physical trait such as skin color, ethnicity, or a disability.
They met with me, sure. But it was always a “my way or the highway” attitude they projected.
That isn’t to say there aren’t plenty who are holding on by their fingernails in the suburbs too, but all too often, their ignorance of what the educational system deems appropriate behavior and dress code are masked by other factors. For example, as a single mother, I noticed a marked coolness on the part of the other women when I was active with the band boosters; a chill which was confirmed by some of the other single moms. In fact, it was actually made blazingly clear to one woman when it became known that the man she was always with was someone she lived with but wasn’t married to. Somehow, we were undesirables, not only in the eyes of other parents, but the school system as well.
the other single mothers. And we sure weren’t going to reach out to anyone in the secret society of marrieds for help. Showing even the slightest sign of weakness to that pool of piranhas was taken as an invitation to attack and consume.
While I can empathize with teachers who want to be taken seriously, and know their jobs aren’t exactly easy, I hope my experience is the exception rather than the rule. I hope our educators are the first to follow the old adage: don’t judge a book by its cover. and remember if a parent isn’t dressing up for them, it may be something far more insidious than disrespect which has them presenting themselves in all their naked and unadorned glory.
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