The Virtue of Embracing Chaos

“Any disaster you can survive is an improvement in your character, your stature, and your life. What a privilege! Then, when looking back at your life, you will see that the moments which seemed to be great failures followed by wreckage were the incidents that shaped the life you have now.” ~Joseph Campbell

Life is not smooth, nor should you want it to be. After all, smooth sailing does not make seasoned sailors. Comfortable beds do not make fierce warriors. Soft times do not create strong men.

All the more reason to embrace the rough, hug the hurricane, open yourself up to the stropping of the whetstone, drag your ego kicking and screaming over the hot coals of hard times. Cultivate the courage to adapt and overcome the vicissitudes of life.

It will likely hurt like hell. It will most definitely tear you apart. It might even kill you. But the existential benefits are worth the pain, the tearing, and the risk. It’s worth going through a thousand and one Hells to discover just one new Heaven. And often, it’s the only way to do so. As Nietzsche said, “Everyone who has ever built anywhere a “new heaven” first found the power thereto in his own hell.”

There is a terrible joy in embracing chaos that the order-clingers and status quo junkies will never know. There’s a virtue in madness that the so-called sane cannot fathom. As Jung said, “In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order.”

It makes itself known despite our own ignorance. It comes in the archetypal form of the Shadow or the Trickster or Dionysus. It rises out of the ashes of tragic loss or a terrible setback. It tears through the thin veil of cultural conditioning. It howls through the faux song and dance of religious indoctrination and political propaganda.

Blinding light can be just as unhealthy as too much darkness. To maintain balance, both must be answered with their opposite. Chaos (darkness) is the heart of order (light). Order is the womb of chaos. As John Updike said, “Chaos is God's body. Order is the Devil's chains.”

Just as we should shine our inner light into the darkness to give others hope, we must shine our inner darkness into the blinding light to give others courage. Which reciprocally gives us more hope and courage.

Embracing chaos is a mighty gift, a spiritual boon. We are awarded an existential wakeup call, a sacred call to arms. We learn humility. We learn transformation. We learn resurrection.

We begin to see how necessary pain is for providence to manifest. How crucial it is for the crucible of hardship to mold us into a finer instrument. How vital it is for our inner darkness to step into the light to truly embody wholeness. We see how growth holds the kernel of death. How the master of the cosmos is inevitably food for worms. How the chaos within the current order is a seed for the higher order of tomorrow. How we are both the marble and the sculptor.

Most importantly we learn how naïve we truly are as a species. We see how small we are in the grand scheme of things, how fleeting our time, how utterly absurd our plight, how the unknown Truth absolutely crushes our known “truths.” Luckily, ironically, as Terence McKenna said, “The truth does not require our participation to exist. Only bullshit does.”

Embracing chaos is a virtue because it strengthens our bullshit meter. The chaos of the Trickster teaches us a good sense of humor. The chaos of the Shadow teaches us how to be fierce. A good sense of humor and fierceness are both vital for getting our shit together and for putting the bullshit of others into proper perspective.

The chaos of the Trickster reveals the absurdity of existence. The chaos of the Shadow reveals how life itself is one giant gamble. The Trickster is adept at donning and discarding masks and has the power to break the spell, to loosen the clingy grip, and to unfix fixed thinking. The shadow teaches us how to become better gamblers, better risk-takers, better strategists, better negotiators, and better at handling danger. Both teach us how to walk the tightrope between chaos and character.

Embracing Trickster chaos: “As soon as you have made a thought, laugh at it.” ~Lao Tzu

Embracing Shadow chaos: “Someday this pain will be useful to you.” ~Ovid

Higher character is forged in the fire of chaos. Embracing chaos is a virtue because it transforms pain into purpose, obstacles into opportunities, struggles into strength, and rejection into resilience. When we embrace chaos, we become a cocoon where our naïve ego is annihilated, our Shadow is assimilated, and wholeness becomes possible. We become less naïve, less rigid, less fragile. We become more vulnerable, more flexible, more antifragile.

Suddenly we’re able to maintain the tension between opposites. We’re able to strike a balance between thesis and antithesis so that synthesis can manifest. We discover a healthy nonattachment with our place in the infinite interconnectedness of all things. We learn how to adapt to Paradox. We learn how to be comfortable with being uncomfortable. We learn to subsume fear and transmute it into fearlessness.

As Tom Robbins said, “True stability results when presumed order and presumed disorder are balanced. A truly stable system expects the unexpected, is prepared to be disrupted, waits to be transformed.”

We either integrate chaos on our own terms or it will come out at some unexpected time in the future as disintegrated madness. We either empower ourselves through chaos or the madness of denial and delusion will swallow us whole, leaving us powerless and a puppet to chaos. Authentic wholeness requires intimacy with both the chaos that surrounds us and the chaos within us.

Harmony is always humbling. Poise is always an antidote to extremism. Balance is always a sacrifice. As Heraclitus said, “Opposition brings concord. Out of discord comes the fairest harmony.”

Embracing chaos comes down to discipline. Self-discipline creates competence. Competence creates confidence. Confidence creates courage. With enough courage you can conquer anything. You can flip any script, turn any table, push any envelope, checkmate any king, count coup on any god. You can transform chaos into character.

The undisciplined mind looks at chaos like a beast it should fear. The disciplined mind looks at chaos like a beast it must ride into fearlessness.

Image source:

There's No Story of Cowards by Rincon Lunático

About the Author:

Gary Z McGee, a former Navy Intelligence Specialist turned philosopher, is the author of Birthday Suit of God and The Looking Glass Man. His works are inspired by the great philosophers of the ages and his wide-awake view of the modern world.

This article (The Virtue of Embracing Chaos) was originally created and published by Self-inflicted Philosophy and is printed here under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Gary Z McGee and self-inflictedphilosophy.com. It may be re-posted freely with proper attribution, author bio, and this statement of copyright.