Monday: Order from Chaos

Order from Chaos is an interesting idea if you really think about it.  It's the idea that, among every infinitesimal blade of grass on this Earth, there is something working to keep everything together, to make sure the right people meet the right people, to give everyone the best chance at success.  Or maybe the stars only align for a few people once or twice in their lives, but when they do they never forget the order that emerged from the world's complete and utter chaos.  Stars have aligned for me more than once, in little periods of time I've heard called watershed moments.  One small event triggers another, each one appearing small in its own right.  But then, some time later, you look back and realize that that one small event created order from chaos and transformed your life.

In physics, I believe that they call that Chaos Theory.  In regular day people-speak, it's called the Butterfly Effect.

Am I saying that I believe that a butterfly flapping its wings in South America could cause a typhoon in Japan?  In simple terms... yes.  It's almost infinitely unlikely that such a thing would happen, but if everything comes into place that butterfly could be (unintentionally) responsible for a natural disaster.

Here, let's try and example.  A certain friend of mine hears a song while watching WWE, and thinks that I might like it.  I would never watch WWE, so if I hadn't been friends with this person for years, and if we hadn't had a tradition of exchanging songs, this would never have happened in the first place.  But he sends me the song, and I listen a couple of times.  At first I don't really like it, but it starts to grow on me.  Before long I've downloaded it and I'm looping it with a couple other songs while I write a really awesome story I had thought up at around that same time.  Over the course of a summer it becomes my favorite song of all time, and the soundtrack for a story that wouldn't be nearly as alive in my mind without the song to fuel it.

Then, in the fall, my Computer Art teacher decides to be absent for a day and a substitute fills in, one who lets us listen to music while we're working.  (The fact that I was even in Computer Art is another, albeit shorter, string of Butterfly Effect circumstances).  I happened to bring my headphones that day, because I'd found a new song the night before that I'd wanted to listen to on the bus.  I plug them into the computer and go to Yahoo Radio, not Pandora, not Playlist, not any of the other million music streaming sites.  On Yahoo Radio I hear another song from the same band that does the first song, and I happen to like it enough to write down its name.  I go home and listen to it again, and I download it.

A little while later I decide to check out some more songs by the band.  I listen to the rest of this album, and then decide to download it.  I listen to it all the way through, and then focus on a couple songs.  Over a few more months I learned a lot of lessons from that music, and the band grew on me enough that I decided to download another of their albums.  And then another.  Then another.  And with each new song I learn something new; each new song helps shape me in a new way.  I'm a better person because of music, and, crazy as it sounds, that band's music has helped me discover new things.

Finally, during the Choir Trip back in April, I meet an awesome girl and come home, which in itself is another string of Butterfly Effect circumstances.  But because of this, I decide to download the two Rise Against (for that is the band's name) albums that I didn't have at that point.  They're both the earliest albums, rough and raw-sounding, but I found some awesome songs on them that continued to help shape me.  I sit here now, at the end of sophomore year, writing an entire post that stems from a five-second decision a friend of mine made last summer to send me a song, and about all of the circumstances that stemmed from that.

If that's not Order from Chaos, I don't know what is.

SONG OF THE DAY: SATELLITE

That's the song.  Satellite by Rise Against.  The lyrics are forever ingrained into my head.

"Because we won't back down, we won't run and hide.  Because these are the things that we can't deny.  I'm passing over you like a satellite, so catch me if I fall."

Powerful stuff, even though Anthony might disagree.  What can I say.  Thanks for sending this song to me buddy.  Adios.