Walking amidst Chaos & Order

When we look back on our childhood, most of us feel nostalgic. Why don't we feel similar to that — maybe last month? Do you think it should cost us years before we recognize what is happening today will be a memory someday? We end up reminiscing the golden days and missing them if that's a good memory, or have all the negative emotions resurface if it turns out to be a bad memory.

I emotionally hurt a girl in recent times. Whatever the valid reasons I tell myself or the world, I broke her is a fact. There was never a point, or a period in my life I felt so much guilt. Guilt is a punishing feeling. Unlike sadness, it doesn't go away once you cry hard. It creates deep darkness in everyday life. You see the light only when you are distracted in one way or another. But darkness still prevails because I can't lead life finding distractions. I can't dodge but accept the fact that this is going to be a memory.

I will be lying if I say I have a secret that will help you feel about memories differently, whether they are good or bad.

Let us all admit that our actions in the present dictate how we feel about memories. For example, when I look back at a fight that I had with my classmate during school feels unnecessary today because I can't even recall his face; otherwise, I could have had a peaceful moment. In a journey, he was a background character. It's naive to dismiss this realization just because I could tell myself I was too young in school days to realize it.

So how do I navigate the present of life? We can certainly agree that we are the sole owners of our actions.

I learned that we perceive reality as a mix of chaos and order. We don't realize it.

One way of representing it

Chaos is the domain of ignorance itself. It's unexplored territory. Chaos is what extends, eternally and without limit, beyond the boundaries of all states, all ideas, and all disciplines. It's the foreigner, the stranger, the member of another gang, the rustle in the nighttime bushes, the monster under the bed, your mother's hidden anger, and your child's sickness. Chaos is the despair and horror you feel when profoundly betrayed. It's where you end up when things fall apart, your dreams die, your career collapses, or your marriage ends.

Order, by contrast, is explored territory. That's the hundreds-of-millions-of-years-old hierarchy of place, position, and authority. That's the structure of society. It's the structure provided by biology, too—particularly insofar as you are adapted, as you are, to the structure of society. Order is tribe, religion, hearth, home, and country. It's the warm, secure living room where the fireplace glows, and the children play. It's the greatness of tradition, the rows of desks in a school classroom, the trains that leave on time, the calendar, and the clock.

-- Jordan B Peterson

Too much order becomes one-sided — consider Hitler wanting Germany to win the world (or) too much following rules create robots, not humans, in corporate companies.
Too less chaos closes doors for opportunities — If you don't try unknown dishes, how will you find your favorite? (or) if you are scared of trying something new, humanity doesn't deserve the value of innovations through experiments!

In childhood, consciousness consumes us. We do not have any age already, so everything we face is a new experience. But a few years later, when you become an adult, you have 20 years of experience behind you that stops you from looking at any experience as new. Hence we feel nostalgic. As an adult, it's time for you to make this experience new and deliberate. Using the consciousness in the present will help you place one foot in what you have mastered and understood and the other in what you are currently exploring and mastering. This way, I control my actions that will dictate how I feel about the memories I'm about to create. It will keep me armed to face the darkness that guilt creates so that I emerge wiser instead of trying to dodge it.