Wisdom is the complete willingness to be the plaything of chance circumstances”.
 (Lao-Tse)

I’ve been blogging for over eight years. The anniversary has come and gone. That’s a long time and a lot of words. I’ve been taking stock: what I’ve been doing all this time is turning – writing – chaos into order.

This realisation tied-in neatly with my one New Year’s Resolution for 2019: to clean up my room. It’s one of the 12 Rules in Jordan B Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life. I was already into a physical de-chaosing of my new home when I first heard of Jordan Peterson, professor of psychology at Toronto University, clinical psychologist and, according to The Spectator: One of the most important thinkers to emerge on the world stage for many years. When I saw the subtitle to 12 Rules I nearly dropped my paintbrush (I was de-chaosing the kitchen ceiling).  An Antidote to Chaos, I read. I laughed out loud. 

I should be good at processing chaos. I’ve experienced a lot of chaos. I had an extremely chaotic childhood. By the age of 16 I’d moved schools and homes eight times. I even went to the same school twice. The first time I was taken away I was in a class one above my age group. Not the second time. I have a faint memory of a quarrel between the headmistress and my parents, the first time I was taken out of the school. The chaos didn’t stop in adulthood. I’ve had to do a lot of lock, stock and barreling.

And so there I was, painting the ceiling in the kitchen. And to compensate for the boredom, not to mention the neck pain, I was taking what substitutes for a spoonful of sugar – reading breaks – between brushstrokes. And that’s how I serendipitously came across the newspaper article headed: How dangerous is Jordan B Peterson, … “Who the hell is Jordan B Peterson?” I thought.