L&C

There are two responses when we find ourselves in “a sea of chaos”:

1. You might feel powerless or small, chaos feels bigger than us.
2. You might feel afraid or angry, chaos can feel horrible.

I recognise these feelings in myself, feeling both powerless and afraid, especially in the last few months.

“If systems are far from equilibrium, small islands of coherence in a sea of chaos have the capacity to uplift the system to a higher order.” ~ Nobel Prize-winning chemist Ilya Prigogine

Consider two playgrounds:

The quiet, orderly one where little changes, kids play calmly and it’s easy to understand. Versus the chaotic, energetic one where a small group of kids might start a game that rapidly spreads. Prigogine’s research shows that in energetic, highly disorganised systems, small coherent groups often create meaningful change.

So perhaps there’s a third response: Finding or creating a small island of coherence.

Part of us may still feel powerless or afraid. Will this actually change anything? Yet, when we accept that we’re no longer on an orderly playground (perhaps we never were), we learn that this is actually exactly what’s needed.

And this applies when the system is a flock of birds, a weather pattern, a chemical reaction, your organisation, or even simply just you.

What choice does a bee in an angry swarm have? Turns out a lot.