I spent this weekend doing some MUCH NEEDED organization. You know how your life just gets flipped around and stuff happens? You know how when you go to the pantry to find something to eat and it it suddenly dawns on you that it looks like the above picture; and has looked that way for quite some time. It's almost like you awake one morning, look around and come to the realization that "This place, my life, everything, is one BIG mess!" That's probably a bit overly dramatic, but I guess that most of us have gotten to that spot once or twice in our lives; right?
My wife had to go into Sacramento early Saturday morning to do something for work for a couple of hours, so I decided to drive her and then afterwards we headed up to Placerville for brunch at our favorite spot: The Buttercup Pantry. You should try that place...it's awesome. Afterwards, we walked around town for awhile and spent some browsing the shops. I liked the hardware store! It was amazing to see SO much stuff that was so useful and so well-organized.
We got back home in the early afternoon and I spent the remainder of the day zipping around town dropping off this, picking up that, getting FOUR new tires put on my car, getting the oil changed, washing the car, you name it! Meanwhile, Ginger was home doing laundry and cleaning the house. Sunday, there was more laundry and more cleaning. It was also FALL DECORATION time, which meant a trip to storage to retrieve the decorations, and lots of pumpkin candle scents in the house! I also worked on a crafty fall painting project outside on the porch. It looks pretty cool!
The majority of my Sunday was spent cleaning and organizing the pantry. The "organized chaos" of the hardware store in Placerville had inspired me! As the chef of the family, the pantry my domain; and throughout the summer I had let it devolve into a disaster area that needed some serious attention. So, I brought in the "heavy equipment" (me) and got to work. After several bags of trash and some hefty cleaning and organizing, I was able to get it whipped back into shape. Within a few hours, the space went from chaos to order, and it now looks amazing.
During all of this organizational frenzy, I was reminded that the proper place to be in life is on the boundary between order and chaos. As human beings, we are often guilty of having utopian fantasies; we long for a world or society free of problems and strife. While this may seem like a dream worthy of pursuing, history has taught us the hard truth that utopian pursuits bring about epic disasters like WWII and the totalitarian regimes of the 20th century. When people start believing they can achieve societal utopia and then begin to actively strive for it; that's when the trouble starts. It is interesting that what is true at the societal level is also true at the individual level. Excessive order and uniformity breeds complacency and makes for a boring life devoid of creativity and purpose. Excessive chaos or disorder causes stress, which leads to bad decision-making, sickness, and suffering. We cannot, and we shouldn't, wish to live our lives free from chaos. We don't need to live in a utopia or even strive for it. Perhaps it is best to not assign "good or bad" to order and chaos as competing forces, but rather to view them as complimentary. Many times when we are faced with excessive chaos and disorder, our creative ability to bring forth order OUT of chaos is able to come to light. The ability to tame the world around us and make it bend to our will is a fantastic achievement; and one that is uniquely human.
As educators, we play a major role in this process EVERY DAY! No, I don't mean that we bring order out of chaos by forcing students bend to our will, or through seeking to dominate or control them. On the contrary, what we ARE doing is passing along the flame of knowledge (a light) so that students can use it to tame and understand their OWN world. We help to change the world one student at a time! This harkens back to the story of Prometheus, who stole fire from the gods and gave it to mankind. Mankind then went on to use fire as a tool to gain mastery over the chaotic natural world. Like the yin-yang symbol suggests, teachers should think of themselves as the white dot within the black; a light in the darkness, giving hope, guidance, and balance.
You have the FIRE, let it burn within you and share that with your students.