Are you at the border between order and chaos?

We have all seen the yin yang symbol, right? And most of us have a vague idea about what it represents. The way it was explained to me was that it represented good and evil, that was basically it. At least that’s what I remember of the explanation. This is typical of our understanding of the world. It's staggering to think about all the things we've never even heard of. There are a lot of things we have heard of, there are some things we’re pretty familiar with, we master a few thing and maybe we are experts in one or a few things.

Today I was listening to a podcast which is hosted by Jordan Peterson. He talks about the Daoist (or Taoist) belief that one should strive to stand with one foot in order, and the other in chaos. He describes order as the things you know and the environments where things are kind of predictable and understandable. Order is when your actions produce the intended result. Chaos is, well it’s the opposite of order. Peterson goes on to explain that, according to the Daoists order can turn into chaos and chaos can turn into order, this is why there is a white dot on the black side and a black dot on the white side. 

Obviously, you don’t want your life to be utter chaos, this leads to a stress response. You stop thinking about and planning for the future, anything could happen at any time so you wait and prepare yourself to react. But you don’t want complete order either. Complete order is just boring repetition. Peterson says that’s what fascists want, not that they want boring repetition, they want complete order. 

Here’s the interesting and applicable part that made me want to write this post. Peterson says that you can sense when you have a good balance between order and chaos. So, how can you tell? I’ll quote Peterson here “you’re secure enough to be confident, but not so secured that you’re bored, and you’re interested enough to be awake, but not so interested that you’re terrified.” 

This struck me as a very appealing way to live life. Getting out of your comfort zone without “going cray cray”. So, are you living on the edge?