The designation of time
Organisation. Order. For many these are necessary tasks. For some they are the emergency brakes they apply to a car skidding out of control, for others they have always been there, a foundation upon which to base a life in which all is as controlled as is possible. Controlled. Measured. But for me the controlling of chaos, the measuring out of turmoil, is the restriction of passion and thus the measuring out and rationing of life itself.
The problem arises when we confuse reducing the stress within our lives with creating peace within our lives. A stressless life is not necessarily a peaceful one. Certainly, I accept stress is a great stain on many lives, a blot of ink which runs, ruining every aspect of life. However, to claim that ordering one’s life is a way of reducing this stress is a grave error; controlling the external environment is not a substitute for control of the internal environment. Perfect order on the outside only serves to conceal the destruction within.
It is a misconception to believe that organising your life and reducing distractions is liberation; certainly, stress is a manacle, an albatross hung around your neck. But to replace disorder with order is simply to replace one set of chains with another. It is to restrict yourself to following systems, schedules, timetables. And within this order, too, there is stress. It is not an escape from your problems, it is simply a new set of prison walls; where the wardens were once advancing deadlines, final demands on bills, now you are penned in by the barbed wire of appointments and the cell of the ticking of a watch. Certainly, rhythm plays its part within nature. But what gives rhythm its spirit is syncopation. We cannot simply sacrifice our individuality to become computers, robots following a preordained pattern, walking zombie-like as we follow our itineraries. You cannot be at peace with the self when you have sacrificed the self.
Peace is not the absence of stimuli. Internal calm is not necessarily dependent upon external stillness.
The maelstrom is a symbol of chaos; it is a cataclysmic whirlpool; it is the storm of emotion, the fury of war. But at the centre of the maelstrom all is still.
For me, the reduction of distractions is not only unproductive; it is counterproductive. It is dangerously restrictive. For the chaos around me stirs me, it injects me with my passion, it stimulates me, it arouses my creativity. Indeed, to shut off the disorder and chaos, the crowds, the storms and the noise would not offer me peace; rather, it would suffocate the creativity which is the source of my peace. Like the maelstrom, my stillness is not just in spite of the chaos around me; my stillness is a PRODUCT of the chaos. Without the raging froth of water, the clouds, the thunder, the screams, the shouts, the winds, the chaos all around me, without my sitting at the centre of the storm, I would not be able to look within myself, and I would not be able to hear the childish laughter and excitement which comes from passion. For I sit at the centre of the maelstrom.