9.18.11

There are times, when the weight of it all lies heavy on my shoulders, that I'm tempted to run back to my former simple (albeit naive) and black-and-white worldview. Life's easier when we have all the simple answers to the complicated questions. Maybe "tempted" isn't the right word; just a faint memory, nostalgic in nature, of simpler times when I had all the answers, and I long for that order and rhythm to be restored. But I can't return to such a simplistic worldview, because simple things are only simple until you actually think about them. And the "order" of simplicity seeks to systematize away all chaos, but chaos by virtue of being chaos can't be systematized. And the rhythm found in simplistic worldviews must explain away or flat-out ignore the vast disharmony riddling the cosmos: from deep space black holes to the rivalries in our own private hearts, disharmony--the driving force of the cosmos--abides. How, then, can any systematized worldview be valid in a universe governed by such disharmony ("governed," here, being a poor word choice)? And yet I have the need--we have the need--to try and make sense of it all. There's a sort of disconnect, it seems, between the world and our perceptions of the world. Is there order in chaos, and can chaos be brought to bear on a systematic train-of-thought in such a way that it, too, is adequately dealt with as chaos and yet kept in uniform order? This is what we seek, this is what we're longing for, and I'm not sure if it's a valid pursuit.