The opposite of order is not chaos. Maybe it is freedom.

The opposite of order
is not chaos.
Maybe it is freedom.

The above is from the book The Dance Tree by @kiran_mh

I’ve always been intrigued by opposites.
It’s quite a creative exercise to come up with the opposite of things.

As an artist you learn the opposite of colors on the color wheel.

As a human you are told the opposites of good and bad in people, emotions, actions.

But are opposites really always obvious?

Like what’s the opposite of wood?
Or rain?
Or, like in the quote, of order?

When I read the quote I felt one of those bodily reactions that say ‘Pay attention!’.

We have a tendency to not like too much order or too much chaos and seem to swim somewhere in between all the time.

Opposite ends of anything can be quite extreme.

Too much of a pure color can be aggressive. So we tone it down. Pair it with others.

Too much order can make us feel trapped, boxed in.
Too much chaos makes us feel itchy and we crave peace.

So maybe the opposite of anything really is freedom?

If we are free from seeing anything as order or chaos, love or hate, easy or difficult, same or different, wouldn’t that make our lives lighter and easier?

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Additional pondering:

What does chaos create? (think emotions, bodily reactions, thoughts…)

Where in your life do you crave order at the moment?

What does order look like? More of this, less of that?

What would freedom from order or chaos look and feel like?