How to Thrive in Chaos
Week 18: Experimenting with Absurdism
Thunder clapped, and my eyes burst open. My first conscious thought of the day was Toni Morrison saying that sometimes we just don’t survive whole, but only in part. Immediately, this connected to an idea I’d just learned about called Selectively Advantageous Instability (SAI) a proposed law of biology that says it may be beneficial for a system to have an element of instability - when the system benefits from increased complexity… but only if the cost is not too great.
These two ideas swirled in my head begging to be developed by my ritual of morning pages, but before I had the chance to pour the much-needed bean water, I had to clean up a few messes left by a new unstable element in my life, my mom’s dogs. She’s living with us for a few months, and I’ve been worrying that I miscalculated the cost of adding this unstable element. Typically, I’m good at figuring things out, but it’s hard to figure anything out with unstable elements bombarding your physical and mental space. The cost was certainly too great in this moment - I’d already lost the peaceful piece of myself that I’d worked hard to create. I was angry at myself for not knowing if my system would benefit from “increased complexity”, but all I knew was that I would not survive this period in whole.
A familiar feeling of survival kicked in. I was angry that I had to return to this horrible feeling that I hadn’t felt in a very long time. I was angry that I felt like I did when I was a teenager having to retreat to my room, but when I crawled back under the covers with my coffee and notebook, I closed my eyes to recall how I handled this in the past. In the recesses of my mind, I visualized myself thumbing through a taupe file cabinet drawer stuffed with army-green manila folders to find one labeled “How to Survive Thrive in Chaos”.
Oh! Good. I’d been procrastinating on looking for this info - you know… the shit I’m writing an entire book about - but like my very own Room of Requirement, I figured it would come to me when I needed it most. And did. I supposed this would count as a ‘benefit’ of the unstable component rather than a cost. Chaos can force you into your own Room of Requirement. But how did I get here? I know I’ve been here before…and even though this feels like the hardest thing I’ve ever done, so did the last hard thing I did.
In my mind, the green manilla folder opened itself and a stack of collated papers popped into existence. I picked up the top stack and read “Hard Thing #1,354,432 You’ve Survived.”
“SAI Event: QUITTING YOUR JOB IN BIOTECH”. Picking up the top stack of papers I noticed a difficulty score circled in red marker: 15/10
Oh. So yeah, Shit’s always been hard, but on the next line I also read
“Advantage Acquired: Tolerance for Uncertainty, Time with Nova, Creative Pursuits, Philosophical Study, Marital Satisfaction”
Hell yeah. I was thriving after that one. It feels hard now, but that’s because a new stack of papers was forming. I couldn’t make out the SAI Event, but I could tell it was going to be a thick file. I dug deeper to find older dossiers:
SAI Event Survived: LEAVING ACADEMIA
Difficulty: 15/10
Advantage Acquired: Financial Independence, Amazing Travel Opportunities, Knowledge of the Corporate World, Tolerance for Uncertainty, Time with Nova, Time to Explore
And another…
SAI Event Survived: GRAD SCHOOL
Difficulty: 15/10
Advantage Acquired: Intimate Understanding of Science, Grant Writing, Relief from Waitressing, Partial Satisfaction of Curiosity, Tenacity, Self-confidence, Technical Writing Skills
And another…
SAI Event Survived: TEENAGE YEARS
Difficulty: 15/10
Advantage Acquired: Self-sufficiency, Desire to Help and Teach, Ability to Find and Appreciate Genuine Support, Value of Self-Similarity, Work Ethic, The Importance of Distraction, The Value of a Stable Childhood, Motherhood Do’s and Don’ts
I ran my fingers over a gold startbust sticker that said “COMPLETED” on the front of the Teenage Years stack, reminding myself that scars always hurt less than the fresh cut. I felt like a teenager again, living with my mom, and I remembered the last few days of living with her. I got my first tattoo. I’ve always deeply appreciated the unique beauty of a healed scar, which is all a tattoo is, underneath the pretty ink. It’s a scar asked for with intention. I didn’t ask for the scars gained from these files, but knowing what I know now, if I had to go back, I’d still willingly sacrifice the same skin to these selectively unstable elements. I can’t go back, but I know that whatever appears on that blank stack of papers, it will eventually get another gold star and all the trappings that come along with it.
I survived each of these events, turning them all into Selectively Advantageous Instabilities, by three common threads:
1. A Solitary Place
When the world around me is too chaotic, I seek safety in solitude. In writing. Everything has to stop, even if that means parking by the lake to watch the water, or hiding in my bed. I have to be alone. I need quiet. I need stillness and safety to think.
Maslow wasn’t wrong about the base of our hierarchy of needs. There’s quite a bit of evidence that suggests noise increases cognitive load and impairs your ability to process and retain information. It’s nearly impossible to do anything else when you are on high alert.
When shit’s cray, I need to take stock of my wounds, nurse myself back to a healthy brain state and purge what needs to go. When I was young and things felt crazy, I’d tear everything out of my closet, bins, and drawers and throw it all out on the floor in a symbolic attempt at reorganizing my life. Sometimes I'd wear myself out fixating on trying on clothes or organizing my jewelry. I’d sort through it slowly for days until I could access what I had and put it all where it belonged. My practice of writing developed out of a similar necessity. Until I was about 30 I never sat down to write something knowing what I was going to write, I just felt the need to tear everything out, purge, and sort.
Reading this note in one of my mind files, I immediately slapped the file shut, opened my eyes, climbed out of bed and started Marie Kondo-ing the shit out of my closet. I was compelled to do this even though I felt another contrary urge to sit and write. The experience seemed like it would inform what I was trying to say, so I followed it. Tearing through the items in my closet, I realized introducing an SAI to your life is a decision about what to throw away and what to keep. I never got rid of my Corporate Girlie wardrobe because I suspected I might need it again, but I did decide that I’d never again wear shit that didn’t make me feel amazing. “Going back to work” started to appear on the top of the blank stack of papers. Future pictures and videos of me wearing that killer yellow houndstooth blazer populated the stack - joy sparked.
Standing in the mirror with the familiar blazer draped on my shoulders, I remembered the last time I wore it to work: it sat draped behind me on a barstool at an airport bar as I typed - I was always writing. My biggest worry is that it will stifle my creativity, but the first time I did this job, it catalyzed the acceptance of my creative identity. Sure, it killed a big part of my identity as a scientist, and it almost took the rest of me with it, but I’d have never started writing like this if I hadn’t let that part of me die. Writing is how I’ve handled instability as a kid, as a scientist, on planes, in hotels, in boardrooms, in love - everywhere. Now, I have the familiar, stable, practice of writing to sort and purge whatever I can’t handle - AND I’ve gained the courage to start publishing it.
2. A Safe Face
Ken wandered into the room, eyes briefly widening at the mess I’d made. For a moment, I worried, but then I remembered he’s always taken my messes in stride. He always knows that when I’m finished, his space will be refreshed, and his wife will be a better version of herself. He’s been there for almost my entire mess-making journey, and I know that if I get stuck, he’ll be there to help me. If I ask him, he’ll bring the trash bags of purged items to Goodwill.
Taking a moment to explain what I was feeling reminded me that purging alone can be helpful, but the right helpers can turn a purge into an interesting and informative excavation. I grew up feeling very alone until I found him, and now I’m sharing things with you, too. I’ve not always felt safe sharing my thoughts and feelings with others, but I’ve learned that certain people are helpful for certain things. Excavating my feelings by publishing here, with people who appreciate my words is an elevated form of catharsis. I reached over 1000 subscribers last month, and while I don't know who this will touch or how it will affect them, I know that letting the pain out into the wild is an amplified form of catharsis that has the potential to enrich all of our lives.
3. A Nostalgic Embrace
Sharing has its risks, but once you realize that risk is there even in the safe faces and solitary places, you begin to accept that we live with permanent, low-level instability. We accept a constant nostalgic longing for stability that we never really have. For example, we never really have a full grasp of the meaning of words, but this is why I’m nostalgic for the idea of complexity. It marries words like nostalgia and the longing for a place or feeling that never existed, hiraeth, and Plato’s concept of anamnesis, the idea that when we learn something, we’re just recalling some innate knowledge that we acquired before birth. I connect these ideas to the biological concept called self-similarity, a property that allows for optimal growth, resilience, and efficient resource use, not unlike Selective Advantageous Instability. When we feel nostalgia, hiraeth, or anamnesis it seems we’re reaching for self-similarity, and we feel these things when Selective Advantageous Instability disrupts our self-similarity.
Purging my closet I found an old painting of Nova’s, and the nostalgia I felt gave me a much-needed embrace with her, the time when she painted it, and myself at that time - a piece of myself that didn’t survive even the best of times. All I have are the home videos, old pictures, cards, art projects - sweet reminders of the beautiful chaos of the past. Not every file was filled with pain. In the “HAVING A BABY” file, I pulled out a booklet Nova made when she was 5 or 6. It was about a little blonde girl in a pink triangle dress that looked just like Allie Brosh’s self-portrait from the late 2000s. She called her “Chicken Girl”, and it became obvious that like Allie Brosh, Nova was writing a story about herself, a little girl who had just gotten some baby chicks. I remember being struck by the way Nova drew herself just like Allie Brosh did. I Allie Brosh, and I loved chicken girl.
The funny thing about nostalgia is that the thing you feel nostalgia for has to die to be nostalgic about it. Time must pass, friends must be lost, people must change. We’re remembering things about our lives that know longer exist. I see this as a kind of cognitive self-similarity. Self-similarity is a fractal-like property that enables a natural system to be efficient, for example, Romanesco broccoli. It grows in a repeating pattern, but because it’s not perfect nor eternal, it has a built-in longing to it. A built-in nostalgia. All living things seek self-similarity or nostalgia for survival, and I’m no different. Nostalgia helps us accept and appreciate our eternal state of longing, so whenever things get too chaotic or scary, I surround myself with nostalgia.
I emerged from the closet feeling much better, knowing that this new SAI may kill something, but it may also bring me the nostalgia to find parts of myself that used to exist if I ever need them again. I think I disagree with Toni Morrison, though. Maybe we don’t survive in part, but in parts greater than the whole that we started with. That’s the beauty of being a complex adaptive system.
“…Good is just more interesting, more complex, more demanding.” - Toni Morrison