We had a nice quiet dinner in an Italian restaurant tucked high on the bench just a five minute drive outside the canyon. We indulged the girls. Allowed one to order the fresh truffle pasta, took them for ice cream, then finished the day in a relaxation room with low lights, falling water, crackling fires and comfy chairs.
As we parted, our oldest daughter with a quiver full, a new puppy, a husband who's leaving to run the Boston Marathon and a week later will trek to the Mt. Everest base camp, sighed and said, "Back to the chaos."
I thought of my own peaceful surrounding to which I would return and felt uber-grateful. I could feel such gratitude because I too have known chaos.
I have a student who is an advocate for chaos. Each time he brings it up, I retort, "But you have to love peace, right?"
"Yes," he explains, "but we have to have chaos to want peace, to enjoy peace." He seems to thrive in chaos, but perhaps he is not considering the chaos the world has known.
Therefore, he can't convince me to love chaos in the same way he does, but I understand the concept, the truth of life as we know it.
Perhaps I have such an aversion because I have seen vicariously, tremendous chaos. In the Last Days of Vietnam, the documentary exposes harsh chaos. Mobs climbing over the US embassy walls in Saigon. A man who tosses his children from a helicopter to a US ship below. A mother and her small children cross a river to evade Viet Cong troops. I've lived through the Oklahoma City bombing, awakened up one morning to 9-11, and seen terrorist attacks broadcast from almost every corner of the world. I've watched footage of D-day, of Martin Luther King marches gone awry.
When we consider this kind of chaos, I am right--it can be a horrible thing.
When I consider my daughter's return to chaos, it is about love and choices to bring children into the world, to cave into a child's yearnings for a dog, to sacrifice so a husband can answer the calls of adventure that come his way. In a way, chaos is a form of love.
I listen to a man describe his growing-up and his parenting experiences. He was one of five boys and each time a window cracked, or a staircase spindle was karate chopped, his mother would say, "This is why we can't have nice things."
Chaos is a limiting power, but chaos is a revelatory power too. We learn of tolerance and thresholds. We learn of its power and crave for the indulgence of peace. We learn to change chaos, by organizing a desk, switching jobs, saying "No" to a puppy.
We know that someday we will have nice things.
As we parted, our oldest daughter with a quiver full, a new puppy, a husband who's leaving to run the Boston Marathon and a week later will trek to the Mt. Everest base camp, sighed and said, "Back to the chaos."
I thought of my own peaceful surrounding to which I would return and felt uber-grateful. I could feel such gratitude because I too have known chaos.
I have a student who is an advocate for chaos. Each time he brings it up, I retort, "But you have to love peace, right?"
"Yes," he explains, "but we have to have chaos to want peace, to enjoy peace." He seems to thrive in chaos, but perhaps he is not considering the chaos the world has known.
Therefore, he can't convince me to love chaos in the same way he does, but I understand the concept, the truth of life as we know it.
Perhaps I have such an aversion because I have seen vicariously, tremendous chaos. In the Last Days of Vietnam, the documentary exposes harsh chaos. Mobs climbing over the US embassy walls in Saigon. A man who tosses his children from a helicopter to a US ship below. A mother and her small children cross a river to evade Viet Cong troops. I've lived through the Oklahoma City bombing, awakened up one morning to 9-11, and seen terrorist attacks broadcast from almost every corner of the world. I've watched footage of D-day, of Martin Luther King marches gone awry.
When we consider this kind of chaos, I am right--it can be a horrible thing.
When I consider my daughter's return to chaos, it is about love and choices to bring children into the world, to cave into a child's yearnings for a dog, to sacrifice so a husband can answer the calls of adventure that come his way. In a way, chaos is a form of love.
I listen to a man describe his growing-up and his parenting experiences. He was one of five boys and each time a window cracked, or a staircase spindle was karate chopped, his mother would say, "This is why we can't have nice things."
Chaos is a limiting power, but chaos is a revelatory power too. We learn of tolerance and thresholds. We learn of its power and crave for the indulgence of peace. We learn to change chaos, by organizing a desk, switching jobs, saying "No" to a puppy.
We know that someday we will have nice things.
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