One Sunday morning, my wife sat in the living room amidst many jumbled baskets of our daughter’s toys and said, “I spent a lot of time sorting through all these.” But they were already all messed up. Plastic toys mingled with stuffies and board books were thrown in with musical instruments. The funny thing was, only 30 minutes earlier, I had sat in the nursery thinking the same thing: I had just sorted through our daughter’s baby clothes not too long ago. I just did that!
The true comedy, though, is that we think we only have to do these things once, or even once in a while when the reality is that life is just a constant battle against entropy. Our only true Sisyphean task (amongst seemingly so many others) is to hold back the chaos. In recent years, I’ve taken to doing what my grandmother has always done- wipe up a mess as soon as you see it, pick up a dried grain of rice when you feel it underfoot. All in attempts to appease the gods of entropy. Whether it truly works or it just makes us feel like we have some sense of control, I don’t know. Maybe it’s like holding back a flood by building a dam, one handful of sand at a time.
Human nature tends towards hoarding, adding more to our plate than we can chew. My daughter must have a grape in each hand before she will eat one of them. We invite uncertainty into our lives when we add more things. More things means more things to do.
Imagine living a Spartan existence. As I often do. A room sparsely furnished with only a simple bed, a chair, and a wooden desk. Spartans spend their time fighting wars and when they’re at home, they only eat, sleep, and poop. Sometimes they stare at the white, silent walls. Then the Spartan brings back some books from a foreign war and starts writing letters to other people about the ideas in the books. The Spartan then decides to find another Spartan to share the beauty of life with. One room is no longer enough, so they move into a Spartan house with room for their togas, pretty tunics, and collection of gladiator sandals. Because there are two of them, they need a larger chariot, and because they have horses now, they need some farmhands and housekeepers and an accountant. During one of their trips away at war, they find an orphan who needs a family, so they bring the baby into their Spartan home. But the baby needs things, so many things, so what started as a ball and a stick has become a swing set and a play kitchen and blocks and dolls and crates of diapers, clothes, and socks. And what started as a Spartan life has become a Spartan mess.
My daughter is feeding herself now at mealtimes. I resisted for the longest time- spoon-feeding the messiest yogurts and congees, wiping off her hands and mouth after every mushy, jeweled bite of berry or broccoli. But resistance was futile. No sooner had I wiped, then the mess would reappear. So instead of spending my time cleaning, I spent time enjoying watching her shove fistfuls of food into her mouth and guiding her hand while she forked and spooned, and then eventually laughing at her antics when she was done with eating and started playing– painting thin lines on her high chair tray with her tiny finger. I may have embraced the chaos, or I found the joy in it. And I discovered that it still was the same amount to clean up if I cleaned it all up at the end. As someone who tends not to lose things, I now find myself looking for balls, shoes, keys, water bottles, Airpods, my laptop, and yes, my mind.
So maybe humans tend towards entropy and every decision or non-decision is just us feeding coins into the chaos god’s mouth (and no, I don’t mean my daughter). Even in Greek mythology, everything was born from the goddess Khaos. In life, there in chaos but in chaos there is…life. There’s some consolation in that.
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Until next time, always go black tie!
My friend Karyn has a Substack you should read:
My sister’s super talented friend, Lisa, has an Etsy shop that you all should look at (she made the matchboxes in the title photo):