Having Your Act Together

[helwen]

thorsbaby posted that someone at work thought he had his act together, and his thought was that the person didn't know him very well. Then he wondered if other people who seemed to him to have their act together really did, or were faking it.

A number of folks responded to the effect that probably other folks were 'faking it', were lucky to be able to pull things out of thin air or out of "their ass", etc.

My response was to agree with a lot of what other folks said, and also this:

"A person who has a life that is completely orderly has stepped out of the stream of life.

The question is whether you are really 'faking it' when pulling something out of the ether or out of the nether regions? Planning and organizing is all well and good, and I highly recommend doing one's best in those endeavors; but the person who cannot adapt when life throws a curve ball, has no true mastery of life whatsoever."

We try to make some sense of our lives and how we fit into the whole picture of "life, the universe, and everything". There is in fact an order to everything in life; we see it all around us in the mountains and rivers, the formation of clouds, the way a tree grows.

We try our best to sort things out, to have a place for everything in our homes, our work, our play. It's very helpful as we try to focus on setting and accomplishing various goals. Take the event I just helped to put together for this past weekend, as an example. I inquired after teachers, got class descriptions and sorted times for them on a schedule, checked out the classroom spaces, etc. The event steward coordinated the cooks, registration, and where the merchants and other activities would be located. Did everything go as planned? Of course not! Teachers got sick or injured just days before the event, one merchant was ill the morning of the event and didn't make it, and sundry other things. We called on backup teachers, moved some folks around, dropped a class from the schedule, and made it work. Did the attendees have a problem with it? Not at all! When the worst general complaint is that there were too many good classes so that they had to choose between them, you know you've done well.

Ah, but I had backup teachers, you say! In previous years I didn't... The very first year we had a teacher not make it because of car troubles, which we found out about the day of the event. People _at the event_ stepped up to volunteer to teach! It was simply amazing to me, and I haven't really worried about it ever since.

There are currents within or between the patterns that we may or may not be aware of. This is being explored on many fronts, by the way -- weather prediction software has been slowly improving, as researchers become aware of how each weather system affects the others, how the temperature of the land and air and water affect each other, how the waters deep under the antarctic affect the snow on the surface far above them, and more.

These currents help to change existing patterns and form new ones. For those interested in learning more about patterns, a good word to do a search on is 'fractals'. Researchers discovered that the pattern of wave movement in fjords is affected by the shape of the coast, and that the coast's shape is affected by smaller and smaller outcroppings -> rocks -> pebbles -- each a reflection of the shape of the other, just at a different scale.

So too with people's actions and reactions. Those of us who are very good at pulling solutions out of 'thin air', may simply be more aware of these patterns, more able to read them and see what possibilities and probabilities there are. The truly gifted pick the solutions that will be of the greatest benefit to all, even if it may not be the one that is "easiest" or the one that the individual who's choosing would personally prefer -- or so I believe.

Some solutions are selfish or short-sighted. They may be chosen because of greed and a lack of respect for others. And even if you want to choose a solution that's more wholesome and complete, you may not be able to... Sometimes you have to choose the short-term okay solution over the long-term better solution because of limited time, means, or resources. Or for larger-scale issues, you may have to because people simply aren't prepared to make the leap to the best solution. Then you choose the answer that will help things forward.

No matter how organized we may wish to be, it is simply not possible to be prepared for everything. Life happens. It's happening all the time. And this is a good thing, seeing as the alternative is stagnation. Our attempts at regularity in our lives, in the way we eat, exercise, meditate, work and play, are all good and healthy things to do; they are part and parcel of the patterns in ours and the universe's cycle. But we also need to be able to respond to change. How we respond is up to each of us.