A Little Chaos

Is a little chaos good for us?

Perhaps.

Not the kind that burns cities,
splits nations,
turns children into witnesses,
or leaves the earth coughing
beneath the weight of our forgetting.

Not that.

But the smaller kind,
the private storm
that arrives at the locked door of the self
and refuses to leave quietly.

The kind that tips over the careful knowing
of our certainty,
scatters old beliefs across the floor,
and makes us look at what we have been
politely stepping around for years.

A little chaos can be merciful.

It can crack the shell
around a grief we thought was wisdom.
It can loosen the mask
we mistook for a face.
It can make the heart speak plainly,
without etiquette,
without apology,
without the need to look composed.

Sometimes we need the inner weather
to change abruptly.

A strange wind.
A door blown open.
A cupboard of old pain
spilling its contents
into the middle of the room.

Not to punish us,
but to show us
what has been waiting
to be witnessed.

Perhaps I am choosing
a little of this chaos myself,
stepping away for a while
into the silence of Vipassana,
where there is nowhere to perform,
nowhere to explain,
nowhere to place the old noise
except before the quiet gaze
of my own awareness.

I will be back in a couple of weeks.

But first,
I am entering the noble disorder
of stillness,
where the mind may scatter,
the body may speak,
and the soul may bring forward
what ordinary life
keeps politely postponed.

There is chaos
that cleanses.

There is chaos
that finally says,
Enough pretending.
Enough holding your breath
inside a life too small
for your becoming.

And then there is the other chaos.

The great unravelling.
The collective fever.
The noise of systems collapsing,
leaders gambling with lives,
truth becoming theatre,
and fear learning how to march.

That chaos does not ask us to grow.
It asks us to survive.

It does not rearrange the furniture
of the soul.
It removes the house.

So perhaps the question is not
whether chaos is good,
but what kind of chaos
and at what cost.

A little chaos in the human heart
may become a doorway.
A necessary disorder.
A sacred untidiness
before a deeper order appears.

But chaos without compassion,
without wisdom,
without reverence for life,
becomes a hunger.

And hunger, left unexamined,
devours.

So let there be enough chaos
to wake us,
but not so much
that we forget how to care.

Enough to loosen what is frozen,
but not enough
to break what is innocent.

Enough to disturb the false peace,
but not enough
to destroy the living one.

Because sometimes
the soul needs a thunderstorm
to clear the air.

But the world,
the aching, beautiful world,
needs shelter too.