relative chaos ... and other random thoughts

turning points, forks in the road, places where our journey through life hesitates. a waiting, watchful pause, or perhaps a sudden flurry of activity and excitement. sometimes we choose the new path, at times, there is no option, the fates give us an almighty shove.

i was fortunate, i was born into a big, wonderful, tactile family.i grew up surrounded by caring, thinking family members. my family is big on intellect and empathy, they are also articulate and argumentative. . .
we ate our meals at table and learned the art of debate and discussion. my mother offered us a deep spiritual well, respect for others, protect the weak, never give up. my father, an english gentleman, taught us to think, to reason and to develop "a stiff upper lip" for when life threw us a curved ball
like any normal family we fought, sulked, had hissy fits and at times suffered greatly from the delusion that we were hard done by. my mother was a fiery woman who had very little trouble keeping her large family under control.. my father was balanced and gentle....unless we upset mom...in which case...beware!

my path through childhood and into adolescence was fairly smooth, an easy journey. when i was seventeen i met manfred, my love, my best friend, my soul mate. shortly after my eighteenth birthday we married. manfred was an old soul, he had the necessary strength of character and patience to deal with my young self. we had three children and life was good, manfred was successful in his career, i was happy to be a stay at home mom. my path was still smooth. i was able to stride through life without paying too much attention. i believed life was an organized effort, chaos happened to those who allowed it into their lives.

until i turned forty six!
i am a firm believer that we choose the life we will live before we are born. we set ourselves a path with choices in order to learn and grow spiritually. there are no wrong choices, only forks in the road, each one offering a different lesson. some paths perhaps easier and others more difficult but all leading to growth if we accept and learn. so quite why i chose to gift myself this wonderful, magical life with so few major problems until the year i turned forty six i am not sure. a gentle time perhaps to prepare me for the relative chaos which was about to tornado itself into my life....

1994 and i was thrust into chaos. the universe hurled lesson after lesson at me. i, who had been so proud of my control, my almost perfect and very organized life, found myself submerged in a quagmire of chaos.my prejudices were thrust into my face, i was forced to look, to learn and to understand the truth about myself. i suffered tragedy and loss until i was forced to admit. life is not fair, life is not organized, i have no control... life is a journey of relative chaos...
in hindsight i have come to understand that each tragedy, every loss, forced me onto a different path from that which i (in my arrogance) would have chosen. i had a life map and the universe threw it out and offered me only chaos.i have bobbed like a cork on the ocean of life, borne by the winds and currents of chaos in action.

have i learned anything? more than i would ever have thought possible. i was so self satisfied i did not even understand that there was a question!without knowledge of the question, i had no need to search for an answer. i have learned that we are free to plan, to organize, to believe that we are in control of our journey through life. i have come to understand that belief is not the same as "the actual".we live in a wonderful world, filled with beauty, we walk and grow amongst others who have their own plans for the future, their own dose of chaos to learn from. i have learned that the important lesson of the chaos is that while we have no control over those circumstances with which we are presented, in acceptance we can influence our reactions. our emotions and reactions, are ours alone. they are the armor provided for our entry into the physical world. in acceptance of "the actual" we gather control of our emotions, we choose how to act, how to react. we allow ourselves to hate or love, to fight or forgive. we choose to smile at a stranger, to feel called to give to those who have less, those caught unaware in the whirlpool of chaos. life is a learning experience and we will learn to ask "why not me" instead of the self pitying wail of "why me"?

so yes, we exist in a world of chaos, we live in this physical world to enable us to learn to understand our own emotions, our shallows and our depths, our strengths and our weaknesses. we will follow our path and the principal of relative chaos will guide us towards wisdom.